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PCIJ 

P75 

November-December 2005 

i REPORT 

Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism 

Special on Pinoy Political Humor 

ATE GLOW 

HOT WATER in 

GUDANI & LANAO’S 

DIRTY 

SECRETS 

IMPERSONATING PRESIDENTS 

MICHAEL V’S MANY FACES 

WHAT PINOYS FIND FUNNY 

TEXT JOKES AS SIGNS OF THE TIMES 

THE END 

OF PEOPLE 

POWER?

C O N T E N T S 

PEOPLE POWER 

THE PARADOX OF FREEDOM: 

PEOPLE POWER IN THE 

INFORMATION AGE 2 

David Celdran 

When public space migrates to the airwaves and 

the news pages, politics risks degenerating into 

a spectator sport. 

ELECTIONS 2004 

LANAO’S DIRTY SECRETS 6 

Sheila S. Coronel 

What really happened in Lanao del Sur in 2004 

that prompted the attempts to silence Brig. Gen. 

Gudani? 

10 REASONS TO DOUBT THE 

2004 ELECTION RESULTS 12 

The numbers don’t always add up, and that’s 

just one reason why last year’s elections are so 

controversial. 

THE FUTURE OF ELECTIONS 

CAN COMELEC REFORM? 14 

Alecks. P. Pabico 

Despite being hounded by controversy, the elections 

body is resisting change. 

REFORM IN THE BARRACKS 

THE OFFICERS WHO SAY NO 16 

Luz Rimban 

Military and police officers believe reforming the 

system begins with reforming the individual. 

JOURNALIST AT RISK 

REPORTING UNDER THE GUN 20 

Vinia M. Datinguinoo 

Mei Magsino escaped the wrath of the alleged 

jueteng lord who is also Batangas governor. 

THE METROPOLIS 

BATTLE OF THE BILLBOARDS 24 

Charlene Dy 

They’re big, bold, and not quite beautiful. They 

can also be a health and environmental hazard, 

but so far, no one is policing billboards. 

WOMEN AND DISASTER 

RESILIENCE AMID RUIN 26 

Tess Bacalla 

Many more women than men died in the Aceh 

tsunami. Today the women survivors wrestle 

with disaster relief programs that don’t consider 

their special needs. 

YOUTH VOLUNTEERS 

A GIFT OF SELF 30 

Young people discover life’s meaning by doing 

volunteer work. 

SPECIAL ON PINOY POLITICAL HUMOR 

IMPERSONATING PRESIDENTS 32 

Elvira Mata 

This is a country where there’s always someone 

spoofing a president—dead or alive—on 

TV, during concerts, and from time to time, at 

people power marches. Five actors top the list 

of the country’s best impersonators. 

LA VIDA DOBLE 40 

Tony Velasquez 

Because Philippine politics is so ridiculous, amateur 

impersonators are having a feast. 

MOBILE CLOWNING 42 


The cellphone has only encouraged the Pinoy 

propensity for jokes. 

WHERE HAS ALL THE 

LAUGHTER GONE? 44 

Katrina Stuart Santiago 

Websites and blogs have provided an outlet for 

political humor, but not all of them are funny. 

KICK OUT THE CLOWNS 50 

Alan C. Robles 

The popular view is that politics is a circus and 

politicians are clowns who entertain the public 

and make them laugh. 

MAILBOX 

Cover: Rene Boy Facunla, one of the bestknown 

impersonators of President Arroyo, 

finds himself in deep water. 

Photo by Lilen Uy 

Special thanks to Mandy Navasero 

Photos and Illustrations 

Malaya provided the photos for pp. 2, 

3 (upper right), 4 (top), 5 (top & bottom 

right), 8-9, 14, 16 (top), 17, 18, 32 (bottom) 

& 35. Sid Balatan took the photo on 

p.3. Those on p. 4 (bottom) and 15 are 

from PCIJ, on p. 5 from Kasaysayan. Bobby 

Timonera of Mindanews took the Lanao 

photos on pp. 6-8 & 10-11. Photos on 

pp. 16-17 are courtesy of P/Supt. Cesar 

Binag. Vinia Datinguinoo took the photos 

on pp. 20 and 22; those on pp. 21 & 23 

are courtesy of Mei Magsino-Lubis. Ben 

Razon shot the billboards for p.24. Jose 

Enrique Soriano took the photos of the 

tsunami victims in Aceh (pp. 26-28). The 

photo on p. 29 is from Greenpeace and 

on p. 30 from the National Youth Commission. 

Those on pp. 32, 34 (bottom), 

36-37 are from Willie Nepomuceno. Lilen 

Uy took the Ate Glow photos on pp. 33 

& 37. Michael V photos (pp. 34 and 37) 

are courtesy of GMA-7. The other photos 

are courtesy of Jon Santos (pp. 35-36), 

Tessie Tomas (p. 36), and Tony Velasquez 

(pp. 40-41). Illustrations on pp. 42-43 & 

48 are by Jun Aquino. Graphics on pp. 

44-46 courtesy of retzwerx.com. 

EDITOR 


DEPUTY EDITOR 

Cecile C.A. Balgos 

STAFF 

Yvonne T. Chua 

Luz Rimban 

Vinia M. Datinguinoo 

Alecks P. Pabico 

Avigail Olarte 

OFFICE MANAGER 

Fausta Cacdac 

BOARD OF EDITORS 

Philippine Center for 

Investigative Journalism 


Marites Dañguilan Vitug 

Malou Mangahas 

Howie G. Severino 

David Celdran 

Ma. Ceres P. Doyo 

BOARD OF ADVISERS 

Jose V. Abueva 

Jose F. Lacaba 

Cecilia Lazaro 

Tina Monzon-Palma 

Sixto K. Roxas 

Jose M. Galang 

Published by the Philippine Center for 

Investigative Journalism 

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T 4101383 F 929-3571 

Email: pcij@pcij.org; imag@pcij.org 

PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM 

I REPORT

The end of people power? Anti-Arroyo 

protests have not quite reached 

people-power scale, unlike the 

movements against Estrada (center) 

and Marcos (far right). 

THE PARADOX 

PEOPLE POWER IN TH 

DAVID CELDRAN 

IT WAS the perfect formula 

for another uprising. Factors 

and forces that conspired 

to oust a previous 

president surfaced again 

to threaten yet another 

one out of power: a familiar 

pattern of titillating scandal 

and media overkill; congressional 

investigation and official 

cover-up; street protests and 

digital demonstrations. 

The opposition Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo 

faces today is fiercer 

and far more determined to 

oust her than that which forced 

Joseph Estrada out of the Palace 

in 2001. Led by former President 

Cory Aquino and actress Susan 

Roces, two of the country’s most 

popular widows and compelling 

political leaders, it is an 

opposition that includes one 

of the broadest, if not the most 

unlikely, spectrum of activists 

assembled in recent years. 

Media coverage is likewise 

unprecedented. Twenty-fourhour 

news and live broadcasts 

have taken every whistleblower’s 

account (and private intrigues) 

to living rooms and offices everywhere. 

Anti-Arroyo blogging, 

until recently a fringe activity for 

political junkies with too much 

time on their hands, has now 

exploded into the mainstream. 

So have ring tones, jokes, and 

gossip circulating via text. 

Like a virus contaminating 

everything from online chat 

rooms, office conversations, 

news broadcasts, showbiz talk 

shows, and text messages, there 

is no escaping “Gloriagate.” 

The damage to the president, 

as independent polling figures 

indicate, seems irreversible. If 

People Power had a script, then 

this would be it. 

Pundits predicted it was just 

going to be a matter of time before 

Edsa 4 erupted. All that was 

left was for people to spill out into 

the streets. Many did, but not in 

numbers that sent previous presidents 

packing. In the week that 

followed Cory Aquino’s surprise 

televised appeal for President 

Arroyo to resign, about 30,000 

to 40,000 protesters converged 

on Makati’s Ayala Avenue—the 

best effort so far since the crisis 

erupted. Organizers promised 

more, but the rallies on the days 

leading up to and immediately 

after the impeachment complaint 

was killed in Congress failed to 

meet expectations. Where was 

2 PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM I REPORT

T H E E N D O F I N N O C E N C E 

OF FREEDOM 

E INFORMATION AGE 

People Power, or at least the 

kind that showed up in past Edsa 

uprisings? 

That’s what the opposition, 

the administration, and the media, 

who had already laid out 

its coverage plans for a fourth 

Edsa, were left asking. There 

was and continues to be no 

shortage of answers. Organizers 

within the anti-Arroyo opposition 

blame it on the lack of 

centralized leadership—and on 

mutual distrust. With a coalition 

as diverse in its representation 

as in its alternatives to President 

Arroyo, observers predicted that 

divisions within the movement 

would begin to affect the ability 

to communicate a coherent 

message and project a credible 

image to the public. 

From the onset, the presence 

of personalities affiliated with 

Ferdinand Marcos and Joseph 

Estrada in the coalition, both of 

whom were ousted by previous 

Edsa uprisings, created discomfort 

among People Power veterans. 

Those who had experienced the 

various Edsa uprisings, if only 

vicariously through news coverage, 

were just as perplexed—even 

outraged—by the odd coalition of 

former-enemies-now-bedfellows 

in the campaign to oust GMA. 

There were attempts to correct 

this public-relations confusion by 

giving the anti-Arroyo movement 

a more prominent middle-class, 

or put more accurately, a friendlier 

“middle-force” character. But 

repackaging the coalition proved 

difficult. In the age of information, 

hardly anything can still be concealed 

from the public. Whatever 

the camera lens cannot expose 

is left over for the commentariat 

to scrutinize. Few secrets survive 

when the media’s attention is on 

overdrive. 

Previous Edsa revolts may 

have shared the same organizational 

limitations. But the lack of 

a central command, and a more 

defined, and therefore sustainable, 

organizational structure 

was less of a problem then 

since the uprisings unfolded so 

quickly. Ousting a president, 

unlike transforming society, requires 

less preparation. Organizational 

unity and ideological 

purity are not as critical—unless 

when waging protracted warfare. 

Nevertheless, the failure of 

organization remains a popular 

explanation for the absence 

of People Power in 2005. It is, 

however, far from being the only 

reason. Neither is it the most 

compelling. 


I REPORT 

3

POLITICS OF SCANDAL 

Gauging the public mood is 

often very tricky. Get it wrong 

and you either underestimate 

or overestimate how far people 

will go to express their outrage, 

if any at all. Surveys do provide 

clues to the pulse of people, 

but they cannot predict the 

often- spontaneous reactions to 

unfolding political events. Polls, 

if they are to be of any scientific 

use, should also be analyzed in 

the context of historical data. 

The overwhelmingly negative 

opinion of the president after 

the Senate investigations on illegal 

gambling, the release of the 

“Hello Garci” tapes to the media, 

and Arroyo’s public apology, 

follows a downward trajectory 

in presidential popularity after 

the 2004 elections. A look at 

postelection surveys already 

showed a majority dissatisfied 

with the administration, most 

even concluding fraud in the 

polls. While “Gloriagate” has 

pushed the president’s ratings 

to historic lows, Arroyo’s slide 

cannot be compared with the 

dramatic plunge Joseph Estrada 

took after the series of scandals 

exposed his undeclared wealth. 

If Erap’s ratings took a free fall, 

Arroyo’s numbers are slipping 

from previously low expectations 

of her leadership and prior 

questions about her political 

legitimacy. 

Not that the public isn’t outraged 

by the allegations of presidential 

malfeasance; only that 

they may have, after a previous 

term marked by investigations 

on her husband, already conditioned 

themselves to expect 

more scandals ahead. 

No coincidence perhaps that 

Arroyo anchored her election 

campaign on the less-than-inspiring 

themes of pragmatism 

and continuity. Notably, though, 

Raul Roco, Eddie Villanueva, 

Panfilo Lacson and Fernando 

Poe, Jr. promised to bring moral 

leadership to Malacañang as a 

way to differentiate themselves 

from the incumbent. 

Presidential allies like to argue 

that the oust-Arroyo campaign is 

only round two of last year’s elections. 

That may be a shallow and 

self-serving analogy, but a quick 

look at the warm bodies occupying 

the street protests shows a 

who’s who of political partisans 

who campaigned for the president’s 

opponents. And like last 

year’s elections, the administration 

is once again selling to its 

core constituency the continuity 

of an Arroyo presidency over the 

risky alternative of a transition 

government or military-civilian 

junta. 

Fear of the unknown might 

be keeping People Power locked 

safely at home, but so too is fatigue. 

You hear it all the time 

on radio and television call-in 

programs: people are tired of 

politics. Not too tired to watch 

their politicians outdo the soaps 

on television, mind you, but too 

overwhelmed nonetheless by 

the political mudslinging that 

threatens to get anyone involved 

dirtied in the process. 

In this political free-for-all, 

take-no-prisoners brawl, no one 

is spared. Not the pious Cory, or 

the ever so proper Susan. Not 

even the Catholic bishops have 

managed to escape the public’s 

skepticism. Retired generals, 

civil-society leaders, even B-list 

actors—everyone is considered 

a plotter or a has-been mounting 

a comeback. Distrust for public 

figures has reached alarming 

levels so much that people now 

find it hard to make out the crusaders 

from the carpetbaggers, 

the journalists from the spin 

doctors, the well-meaning from 

the just plain mean. 

When the citizens’ trust in 

institutions, in leaders, and ultimately 

in themselves erodes, 

a climate of political nihilism 

takes over and people begin to 

withdraw from civic life and give 

up on political action altogether. 

Strange bedfellows. 

Former rivals get 

together on the 

streets, from left, 

Ping Lacson, Eddie 

Villanueva, Cory 

Aquino, and Susan 

Roces. 

This is the end of innocence—the 

rude awakening to a world the 

way politicians see it: a politics 

without the illusions of greatness 

and heroics. It is shades of grey 

all over and murky definitions 

of the public good. This is the 

moral relativism abhorred by 

both idealists and conservatives 

everywhere. But after a history 

of revolutions with disappointing 

results, Filipinos have learned to 

adjust and adapt. 

Goodbye, Erap! The uprising 

against Estrada was inspired 

by moral outrage. Today 

things are murkier and no 

one seems to be taking the 

moral high ground. 

REDEFINING PUBLIC 

SPACE 

Yet this does not seem to be 

the most crucial reason why, at 

a time when society enjoys unprecedented 

freedom of speech, 

movement, and expression, 

there is also a retreat in political 

activism. Therein in fact lies the 

paradox of freedom. 

Protesters occupy city streets 

and parks to get their message 

across to as many people as 

possible. Citizens are forced 

to do that when they do not 

have equal access to the state’s 

information apparatus. Public 


T H E E N D O F I N N O C E N C E 

space then is where the battle 

for hearts and minds begins and 

where like-minded citizens come 

together to swap information, affirm 

their convictions, and challenge 

official positions—more 

so when government control 

of information is complete. The 

contested space is usually rich 

in symbolic meaning, but it may 

also just be a convenient location 

to converge. Edsa represents 

both. And in the 1986 revolt, 

more than a million considered 

it to be the most effective way 

to be heard and counted. Back 

then, no broadcast network or 

mainstream broadsheet would 

have ever given the opposition 

to Ferdinand Marcos any space, 

and so a frustrated people took 

to the streets. 

A lot has changed since 1986. 

Freedoms like that of the press 

were restored, but these were 

never absolutely immune from 

presidential pressure. The relative 

timidity of the news media prior to 

and immediately after the Chavit 

Singson exposé forced anti-Estrada 

sentiments through new media 

channels such as SMS and the 

Internet. But the limited broadcast 

capabilities of these new technologies 

made reaching a wider public 

difficult. The crowds at Edsa provided 

the link between individual 

and society. Just as followers of 

deposed President Estrada would 

later use their own version of Edsa 

to communicate with a wider audience 

they couldn’t reach through 

the TV networks that had largely 

ignored them. 

The media landscape has 

changed dramatically since 1986 

and even since 2001. Today 

the media have taken their role 

as public watchdog to new 

extremes. Conscious that their 

power to influence political 

events—even make and break 

presidents—is only as potent as 

their ability to generate a vast 

share of the audience, the news 

media have been treading the 

line between crusading journalism 

and mass entertainment. 

(It is no accident that both are 

immensely popular with the 

market.) 

The result has been an increasingly 

hysterical, albeit, massively 

entertaining politics. Call it 

the tabloidization of public life. 

When public space migrates to 

the airwaves and to the pages of 

broadsheets, the nation’s politics 

adapts to its new home. It’s as 

if all political behavior is transformed 

by and for the camera. 

Everyone, from the president to 

the street protester, is in on it. 

Legislation is out. Congressional 

inquiry is in. Proselytizing—out, 

agit-prop—definitely in. Political 

actors learn to master the 

medium and use the live press 

conference with skill. Mutineers 

take questions from the press 

and whistleblowers are assigned 

publicists to assist them. Had 

Spectator sport? 

There is outrage on 

the streets, as shown 

in this anti-Arroyo 

rally, but still, most 

people are content 

to just watch it all on 

television, in contrast 

to Edsa 1 (below, 

extreme right), when 

the multitudes took to 

the streets. 

President Arroyo resigned on 

that Friday Cory Aquino and the 

“Hyatt 10”called on her to step 

down, the Philippines would 

have enjoyed the distinction of 

launching the first electronic uprising 

in history. It would have 

been dubbed the Presscon Revolution—if 

only it had succeeded. 

Clearly, revolutions that happen 

in the hyperreal world of television 

cannot replace those of real 

boots on the ground. 

The stagecraft and spin-doctoring 

politicians try so hard to 

conceal is laid bare for all to see. 

Like wrestling matches we know 

to be scripted but cheer on nevertheless, 

our politics, after years 

of sensationalism, is degenerating 

into little more than a spectator 

sport. By jeering, or cheering, 

people feel that they’re actually 

getting involved. Without having 

to leave their homes, people can 

have the satisfaction of watching 

talk-show hosts articulate feelings 

of disgust and frustration 

for them. When you listen in 

to radio commentators beat up 

politicians on air, you can’t help 

but wonder if expressing your 

opinion—the least of your civic 

responsibilities—may actually 

still matter, when those guys 

seem to do a better job at it. 

But those who predict the 

end of People Power are wrong. 

Apathy may be a symptom of the 

growing disconnection between 

citizens and their government, 

but indifference is also a form of 

protest against politics as usual 

in the country. Could it be that 

the steady diet of scandals have 

numbed the senses and the 

ability to express outrage? Or is 

People Power merely evolving, 

adapting to new forms of public 

space—physical and virtual? 

Today’s young, the first generation 

of kids growing up in a 

digitally interconnected world 

will determine how dissent will 

be defined and expressed in the 

future, be it through podcasts, 

audio-video blogs, or new forms 

of social organization. History, 

after all, has taught us that people, 

when pushed hard enough, 

will eventually organize, fight 

back, and seek to overthrow the 

conditions that oppress them. 

i 


I REPORT 

5

SHEILA S. CORONEL 

(WITH ADDITIONAL REPORTING 

BY BOOMA C. CRUZ AND 

“PROBE”) 

THE GHOSTS of 

the last elections 

haunt Lanao del 

Sur and they refuse 

to rest. They will 

not go away. They 

flit about, seeking 

resolution. So when Brig. Gen. 

Francisco Gudani, the commander 

of the Marine brigade stationed 

in the province during the last 

election, testified in the Senate 

in September, saying that he had 

been mysteriously relieved from 

his post two days after the voting, 

the ghosts were roused again. Days 

after the Senate hearing, Gudani 

and one of his officers, Marine Lt. 

Col. Alexander Balutan, were sent 

to court martial for refusing to heed 

their superiors’ orders not to testify. 

The ghosts, having been roused, 

are now rattling even more noisily 

than ever before. 

What really happened in 

Lanao del Sur in May 2004? What 

did the military do there that necessitated 

the relief of a stubborn 

general and later, his frantic superiors’ 

efforts to ensure he would 

not break the silence? What other 

dirty secrets lie buried in Lanao? 

The answer to these questions 

is whispered about on the streets 

of Marawi and elsewhere in the 

province. There was massive 

cheating in the presidential count, 

residents and officials there say, 

and it involved several groups 

of operators, some from Manila, 

others homegrown. It happened, 

they say, with the complicity of 

the military, the Commission on 

Elections (Comelec), and even 

Malacañang. 

President Gloria Macapagal- 

Arroyo insists that she won fair 

and square. Despite doubts that 

had been raised about the conduct 

of the polls, she says that 

survey results and international 

election monitors attest to her 

victory. She dismisses the accusations 

of fraud and says her 

enemies are resurrecting the 

election charges because they 

want to unseat her. 

In 2004, Arroyo scored one 

of her bigger election triumphs 

in Lanao del Sur. There, according 

to the official Comelec count, 

she clobbered her closest rival, 

actor Fernando Poe Jr. The score: 

158,748 vs. 50,107, or a ratio of 

three votes to one. While Arroyo 

did even better in her home 

province of Pampanga, and also 

in Cebu, where she was an early 

favorite, the Lanao del Sur upset 

was astonishing because Poe was 

wildly popular there, if only because 

nearly every Maranao had 

seen “Magnum .357,” the movie 

where the actor, expertly wielding 

a revolver, played the role of 

a fearless Moro policeman. 

Questions about the Lanao 

results were raised even during 

the congressional canvass 

that preceded the president’s 

proclamation. Even then, the 

opposition had pointed out 

some eye-popping anomalies. 

In the town of Poona Bayabao, 

for example, Arroyo got all 4,700 

votes; all the other presidential 

candidates scored zero. Yet 

precinct-level election returns 

obtained by both the opposition 

and the local chapter of the 

National Citizens’ Movement for 

Free Elections (Namfrel) showed 

substantial votes for Poe. In October, 

“The Probe Team” visited 

the town and nearly everyone 

they talked to there swore they 

had voted for FPJ. 

Indeed, for the entire province, 

both the opposition and Namfrel 

count based on precinct returns 

showed Poe overtaking Arroyo 

by a mile. Yet by the time the 

Comelec finished the provincial 

canvass, the ratios were reversed 

in the president’s favor. 

The opposition cried foul but 

its protests were drowned out by 

the majority during the congressional 

canvass. The local Namfrel 

chapter held press conferences, 

saying that its own incomplete 

count showed Arroyo’s votes 

padded in the final Comelec results 

by 21,217 votes, while Poe’s 

were shaved by 9,174. But this, 

too, went unheeded. 

After all, everyone is blasé 

about cheating in Lanao. The 

province’s reputation precedes it. 

In 1949, by all accounts a fraudulent 

election, it was said that “the 

birds and the bees” voting in 

Lanao enabled Elpidio Quirino 

to bag the presidency. During the 

Marcos era, the joke was that after 

every voting, Ali Dimaporo, the 

Maranao strongman who was a 

staunch ally of the dictator, would 

call up Malacañang and ask his 

patron, “Apo, how many more 

votes do you need?” Decades 

later, not much seemed to have 

changed, but that didn’t seem to 

bother anyone. And so the issue 

LANAO 

DIRTY 

SECRE 


E L E C T I O N S 2 0 0 4 

’S 

Rigged count. The 

2004 elections in 

Lanao del Sur were 

deceptively calm, 

with Marines (right 

photo) administering 

the voting in places 

where there were not 

enough teachers to 

man the polls. 

TS 

was more or less laid to rest, or 

so most people thought. 

And then the “Hello, Garci?” 

tapes surfaced. Containing the 

wiretapped conversations between 

President Arroyo and 

former Comelec Commissioner 

Virgilio Garcillano in May and 

June 2004, the recording stirred 

things up once more. Among 

other things, it showed that 

three of the 14 phone calls Arroyo 

made to the commissioner 

concerned the Lanao count. In 

one of those phone calls, Garcillano 

even assured the president 

that in Lanao as well as Basilan 

“itong ginawa nilang pagpataas 

sa inyo, maayos naman ang 

paggawa (they did a fine job 

of increasing your votes).” This 

caused the resurrection of the 

ghosts. They had not been laid 

to rest, after all. 

A LANDSCAPE OF 

GHOSTS 

Lanao’s is a landscape of rugged 

hills, lakes, and swamps. It is 

crisscrossed by the mighty Agus 

and Cotabato Rivers and their 

tributaries. More than half of the 

province is still forested land and 

many of its inhabitants are poor, 

living on subsistence fishing and 

farming. Many towns still don’t 

have electricity or have it only an 

hour or so a day. Piped water is 

a luxury, so it is in muddy wells 

and pools that villagers drink, 

bathe, and do their laundry. 

Lanao del Sur is very much datu 

country—it is a smattering of little 

fiefdoms ruled by big men. 

Warring clans hold sway there, 

exacting loyalty and obedience 

from their members. This is a 

country of ghosts, a land of dark 

secrets and unsettled scores. 

Everyone says there is no 

such thing as an honest election 

in Lanao. Local bosses, usually 

armed, buy and bully their way to 

public office. If this does not suffice, 

they kill and cheat. Ordinary 

voters are too poor or too weak, 

or live in villages too far from the 

counting, to resist the intimidation 

and the fraud. Inevitably, Lanao 

elections are marred by violent 

incidents involving the killing of 

candidates and their supporters 

and the switching of ballot boxes. 

During the 2001 election count, 

the provincial capitol, where the 

canvassing was being held, was 

hit by mortar fire. 

The common belief in Lanao 

is that the Comelec officials in the 

province, the teachers who man 

the polls, even the watchers of 

rival candidates can be bought; 

if not, they can be kidnapped 

or threatened. This is why the 

operatives of desperate senatorial 

candidates go to Lanao (as 

well as other places in Mindanao) 

to “buy” votes even days 

and weeks after election day. A 

network of dagdag-bawas (votepadding 

and shaving) operators 

has existed there for some time, 

and they are available for a 

price. Some of them approach 

the candidates and offer to rig 

the count for a fee; sometimes 

savvy political operators working 

for Manila-based politicians and 

parties seek them out, with an 

“order” for manufactured votes. 

The operators are masters of 

their craft: they either fabricate 

election returns or certificates of 

canvass or else tamper with the 

genuine ones. They also pay off 

election officials and teachers to 

ensure their complicity in the 

fraud. 

While the results of the local 

elections are closely monitored 

by rival candidates and their 

supporters, making it more difficult, 

although by no means 

impossible, to mess around 

with the count, few people in 

Lanao care about the national 

count. There are few watchers 

left when the national count 

is done. While there is a local 

Namfrel chapter, it cannot cover 

the length and breadth of Lanao. 

Besides, being volunteers and 

being unarmed in a province 

where might is right, they can 

be intimidated as well. 

Just about the only ones who 

had the means to police the elections 

effectively in Lanao del Sur 

were the Marines. The 1 st Marine 

Brigade was stationed in Camp 

Keithley, the military camp on 

a hill in Marawi, the province’s 

lakeshore capital. The Marines 

were new to Lanao del Sur, having 

been assigned there only in 

2003. By the time of the elections, 

they had been stationed 

there only about a year and 

so had not been dirtied by the 

politics of the place. They took 

their role seriously, even holding 

dialogues and “peace covenants” 

among rival political groups. 

“This is the first time a Marine 

brigade is being assigned in the 

Lanao del Sur area,” Brig. Gen. 

Gudani said in his Senate testimony 

on September 28, “and that’s why 

my instruction to everybody was 

clear: we need to hold a clean, 

honest, peaceful election.” 

“We were victims of circumstances,” 

was all Lt. Col. Balutan, 

commander of the 7 th Marine 

battalion assigned to secure 17 

municipalities of Lanao del Sur, 

would say when he testified at 

the Senate also on September 28. 

“I stood my ground against forces 

or pressures from any political 

entity… I promised the people 

of Lanao a peaceful and credible 

election…I told them the armed 

forces and the Marines will protect 

your vote and we will have a 

clean and credible election.” 

FRUSTRATING THE 

MARINES 

To some extent, the Marines 

succeeded. The voting was 

relatively uneventful by Lanao 

standards, although there were 

a few shootouts and attempts to 


I REPORT 

7

switch ballot boxes. A failure of 

elections was declared in several 

towns, but not quite as many as 

in the past. On the request of 

the candidates, who feared violence 

if the counting were held 

in many different places, the 

canvass in all but two of Lanao 

del Sur’s 39 towns was held in 

scenic Marawi, on the northern 

shore of Lake Lanao. The actual 

voting on May 10 and the first 

few days of the canvass were 

tightly secured by the Marines, 

and it was partly for this reason 

that the municipal counts, while 

not completely blameless, went 

relatively well, even resulting in 

the defeat of a handful of wellentrenched 

local dynasties. 

The Marines, however, could 

not prevent what now appears 

to have been a large-scale manipulation 

of the presidential 

count. Judging from the parallel 

counts based on election returns 

obtained by Namfrel and the opposition, 

the presidential votes 

seem to have been tampered 

with big time, not at the precinct 

level but at the municipal and 

provincial canvass. 

Unknown to both Namfrel and 

the opposition, or for that matter, 

the Marines, several groups taking 

orders from the administration 

had been assigned to “operate” in 

Lanao and other Mindanao provinces. 

According to interviews 

with individuals who were part 

of the postelection operations 

in Mindanao, these groups were 

moving independently of each 

other and were apparently not 

aware of each other’s movements. 

But their instructions were the 

Tell that to the Marines? 

Gudani (above) and 

Balutan (right) told the 

Senate that the Marines 

(below, left) did their 

best to ensure an honest 

election in Lanao. 

same: ensure the president wins 

by a million votes. 

One of the groups was led 

by Virgilio Garcillano, the commissioner 

who was ostensibly assigned 

to Southern Tagalog. His 

role was to get the cooperation 

of Comelec field personnel in the 

tampering of the count in Lanao 

and other places in Mindanao, 

apparently with the knowledge 

of the president herself, at least 

as indicated by the conversations 

in the “Hello, Garci” tapes. 

Another group involved Nagamura 

Moner, a Maranao politician 

and currently a shari’ah court 

judge who is widely seen in 

Lanao as a political operator in 

the employ of First Gentleman 

Jose Miguel ‘Mike’ Arroyo. Two of 

Moner’s followers—Abdul Wahab 

Batugan and Lomala Macadaub— 

told “The Probe Team” that during 

the canvassing, they were sent 

by Moner to different provinces 

in Muslim Mindanao where they 

distributed cash to Comelec 

personnel “para baliktarin ang 

COCs (to reverse what’s in the 

certificates of canvass).” 

The third group involved the 

military, but it is unclear how 

far up the chain of command 

the conspiracy went. Based on 

testimonies so far given at the 

Senate and the AFP Fact-Finding 

Board, senior military officers in 

Mindanao were involved in ensuring 

that the operators could 

do their work and in at least one 

instance, instructed soldiers to 

take part in the cheating. 

SUSPICIOUS MOVES 

A few days before the elections, 

there were already signs that 

things were going awry. 

On May 6, four days before 

election day, Garcillano, who was 

also the commissioner in charge 

of personnel, removed Helen 

Flores, the Comelec regional 

director for Muslim Mindanao, 

from her post and transferred her 

to Western Mindanao. The timing 

of the reshuffle just days before 

the polling was highly unusual. 

Even more suspicious, Flores was 

replaced by her deputy, Renato 

Magbutay, who was known to 

be Garcillano’s protégé. Comelec 

sources in Manila and Mindanao 

say that Flores, while also close 

to commissioner, had a reputation 

for being hard-headed; “hindi nila 

mapasunod (they couldn’t make 

her follow their orders).” 

Gudani, in his Senate testimony, 

said that he was surprised 

to find that just a few days before 

May 10, Ray Sumalipao, the 

provincial elections officer for 

Lanao del Sur, was changing the 

assignment of election inspectors 

and the clustering centers of the 

voting precincts. Sumalipao, the 

general said, was taking orders 

from Garcillano. The two elections 

officials were known to be 

particularly close. Sumalipao was 

in fact the election supervisor for 

Lanao del Norte but was moved 

to Lanao del Sur in February 

2004, shortly after Garcillano’s 

appointment as commissioner. 

Sumalipao denies taking instructions 

from Garcillano during 

the elections. He also says that 

contrary to Gudani’s testimony, 

he didn’t move election personnel 

prior to the voting. “The 

clustering was approved by the 

commission way before the elections,” 

he says. “It was Gudani 

who wanted to change the clustering, 

but the Comelec approved 

the recommendation of the election 

officers. He’s lying.” 

A lawyer employed by the 

Comelec since 1961 and assigned 

to Mindanao for most of his 40 

years at the commission, the 

amiable Garcillano was a familiar 

figure among the Comelec field 

personnel on the island. In fact, 

all the Comelec employees there 


E L E C T I O N S 2 0 0 4 

called him “Tatay,” or “Dad.” 

Having risen up the ranks and 

cultivated friendships with election 

bureaucrats, he was known 

for being approachable and also 

for taking care of his people. 

Garcilliano was particularly 

familiar with Lanao del Sur, 

having served as the provincial 

election supervisor there from 

1970 to 1971 and having been 

assigned to supervise either the 

registration or the election there 

several times in the 1990s. So 

close were the Lanao Comelec 

officials to Garcillano that in 

February 2004, they all signed 

a manifesto supporting his appointment 

as commissioner. 

Garcillano was in Manila 

during the election and the 

counting. But he sent his trusted 

nephew, Michaelangelo Zuce, to 

monitor the operations for him. 

Zuce, who was then employed in 

the office of Jose Ma. Rufino, the 

presidential adviser on political 

affairs, has since testified in the 

Senate and implicated his uncle 

in a conspiracy to rig the polls 

that included payoffs made to 

compliant Comelec officials and 

personnel. 

In an interview with “The 

Probe Team” in October, Zuce 

revealed that he was in Mindanao 

even before election day, keeping 

an eye on what was happening 

there. Lanao del Sur, he said, 

became a cause of concern. “I 

was talking frequently to the provincial 

election supervisor there,” 

he said in Tagalog. “He told me 

they could not move because the 

security was strict. The Marines 

were very strict.” 

Zuce said that he reported the 

matter to his uncle. Garcillano 

apparently complained about the 

strict Marines to military authorities, 

having received reports not just 

from Zuce but other informants. 

The leaked tape containing the 

commissioner’s wiretapped conversations 

reveals that in a phone 

conversation with the president 

in the evening of May 28, 2004, 

Garcillano said he had to ask Brig. 

Gen. Hermogenes Esperon Jr., then 

deputy chief of staff for operations, 

and then Southern Command chief 

Lt. Gen. Roy Kyamko to get Gudani 

out of Lanao. 

GUDANI’S SUMMONS 

On May 12, 2004, Gudani was 

summoned to Manila by higher 

headquarters. He left Marawi 

the same day, reported to both 

Navy Flag Officer-in-Command 

Adm. Ernesto de Leon and the 

Marine Commandant Gen. Emmanuel 

Teodosio, and was told 

to take a break—“play golf, go 

to Boracay.” 

Gudani, in his Senate testimony, 

said this was to him an 

“incomprehensible and illogical 

order” since his presence in 

Lanao was crucial. The canvassing 

was then taking place in 

several buildings in and around 

the provincial capitol in Marawi. 

Gudani had two battalions— 

about 200 men—to secure the 

counting, and he was worried 

that these were not enough. 

What Gudani did not know 

was that on the same day that he 

left Marawi, Zuce drove into town. 

Capt. Marlon Mendoza, who was 

Commander in chief. President 

Arroyo won by a landslide in 

Lanao del Sur, but questions 

about the integrity of the voting 

there has tainted her victory. 

detailed to the Comelec as Garcillano’s 

security but was assigned 

to secure the commissioner’s 

nephew instead, was with Zuce 

on May 12. In an affidavit he submitted 

to the Senate last August, 

Mendoza said that on that day, he 

saw Zuce approach Sumalipao in 

one of the canvassing centers “and 

I personally saw a large amount of 

cash in an envelope being given 

to the said Comelec director.” 

Mendoza alleged that he and 

Zuce returned to the canvass 

center the next day, May 13, and 

this was when he heard Zuce 

telling Sumalipao “that he is doing 

something for the success of 

GMA in the election.” 

But Sumalipao angrily denies 

having seen Zuce during 

the canvass. “I know Zuce,” he 

says. “I met him at Garcillano’s 

office and he was introduced 

as the commissioner’s nephew, 

but I never saw him in Marawi 

or Lanao during the canvassing.” 

The security at the canvass center, 

he says, was very strict and 

it would not have been possible 

for Zuce and other unauthorized 

people to get in. 

Meanwhile, on May 12, Col. 

Gomiendo Pirino, an Army officer 

previously assigned to the 

Southcom headquarters in Zamboanga 

City, took over Gudani’s 

command. This was resented by 

the Marines because Pirino was a 

colonel assuming a general’s post, 

and he wasn’t even a Marine. 

Balutan, a decorated combat 

officer, bristled. “My brigade 

commander was relieved…for 

no apparent reason,” he told the 

Senate, “maybe for doing his 

job well, for being apolitical.” In 

contrast, he said, Pirino told him 

to “support the administration.” 

When asked by the senators what 

this meant, Balutan replied that 

he understood it to mean that he 

should “slacken security.” 

The Marines were strict, said 

Balutan, preventing the entry 

into the canvass centers of those 

who were not authorized to 

be there. They also held their 

ground. In his testimony before 

the AFP Fact-Finding Board set 

up to investigate the alleged involvement 

of the military in election 

fraud, Balutan recounted 

how his fellow Marines defied 

orders to cheat. 

Sources in the Board say 

that Balutan, in his testimony, 

recounted the attempt to coopt 

members of the 11 th Marine 

battalion into the conspiracy of 

fraud. About half of the battalion, 

then stationed at the Southcom 

headquarters in Zamboanga 

City, was sent to Marawi a week 

before the elections to help 

administer the voting. There, 

they underwent training by the 

Comelec, so they could act as 

election inspectors as there were 

not enough teachers to man all 

the precincts in Lanao. 

Instead, said Balutan, the 

whole battalion was being instructed 

to cheat. Pirino and 

another Army officer, he said, instructed 

the battalion commander, 

Col. Remigio Valdez, how to rig 

the count. Valdez, who is now 

in schooling in the United States, 

resisted, Balutan said, but it was 

possible that he was bypassed. 

Since 2005, Pirino has been 

the commander of the Armed 

Forces Reserve Command headquartered 

in Pagadian. Contacted 

by telephone, he refused to answer 

questions. “I will only talk 

at the proper forum and proper 

time,” he said. “Any unnecessary 

comment I’ll make will only sensationalize 

the issue.” 

With Pirino in command in 


I REPORT 

9

Camp Keithley, there was a 

noticeable decline in the security 

of the canvass centers, says 

Lanao del Sur Namfrel chair 

Abdullah Dalidig. “The Namfrel 

people were no longer allowed 

in, because of Comelec’s order,” 

he remembers. “Most of the 

watchers were also unable to 

get in, and even if they got in, 

‘di na nakasalita (they were not 

allowed to talk).” 

Dalidig says Pirino, who 

is also Maranao, is his distant 

relative. Sometime during the 

canvassing, when the Namfrel 

chair threatened to complain 

and to expose what he knew, 

the colonel visited him at his 

office. Recounts Dalidig: “He 

told me, ‘Huwag mo ituloy ang 

pagbubulgar. Tulungan mo ‘ko 

(don’t speak out anymore, just 

help me) because GMA is going 

to promote me to general.’ He 

said he was asked to watch me 

because according to Garci, Namfrel 

of Lanao is a problem.” 

THE “TAPAL-TAPAL” 

OPERATIONS 

As the security slackened, the 

operators were able to do their 

work. Zuce said one of his tasks 

was to check on the count. Long 

before the elections, he said, 

his uncle had already laid the 

groundwork. As early as 2002, 

Garcillano had already been 

meeting with key Comelec personnel 

in Mindanao to ensure 

they would do everything to 

make the president win. In those 

meetings, which Zuce helped 

organize, envelopes of cash were 

given out to the Comelec bureaucrats 

in attendance, he said. 

Zuce’s role in the counting 

phase of the election was to 

check on whether the Comelec 

people were doing what they 

had agreed to do. He estimated 

Guarding the 

ballot. Marine 

secures the voting 

in Lanao del Sur. 

that Garcillano’s group was 

given a budget of P9 million 

to P12 million for this phase 

of their operations, although 

they had asked for more than 

P30 million. The money, Zuce 

learned from his uncle, came 

from Pampanga jueteng lord 

Rodolfo ‘Bong’ Pineda. Some of 

it already reached the Comelec 

people days before the voting, 

he said, but more payoffs were 

made during the count. 

President Arroyo, who Zuce 

said hosted meetings for Mindanao-based 

Comelec personnel 

in her Quezon City home prior 

to the 2004 election campaign, 

has scoffed at the latter’s allegations, 

saying that it was 

“black propaganda” concocted 

by “those who are in need of 

money and whose testimonies 

are for sale.” 

But Zuce, who is in hiding, 

insists on the veracity of 

his story. He says that during 

the counting, he went around 

the different canvass centers to 

check how the president was 

doing. He would then report 

to his uncle on the progress of 

the count. If Arroyo was lagging 

in a provincial canvass, he 

would ask the Comelec officials 

there, “Bakit ganu’n ang nangyari, 

akala ko kontrol natin… 

baka puwedeng gawan natin 

na paraan na magtapal tayo, 

madagdagan natin ng ganito 

kalaki. (How did that happen? 

I thought we had everything 

under control…Maybe we can 

do something to remedy the 

situation, we can add this much 

more votes).” 

He said he left it to the Comelec 

people to decide how they 

would rig the count. “Sila na 

nakakaalam no’n, kung anong 

diskarte doon sa provincial 

canvassing (They’re the ones 

who know what do, they had 

to make the calculations and 

work these out in the provincial 

canvassing).” But, he added, 

when Poe’s lead was too big, as 

in Misamis Oriental, the operators 

there risked discovery if they 

padded and shaved the votes too 

much. To compensate for the 

Misamis Oriental upset, he said, 

they had to pad even more the 

Arroyo votes in Lanao del Sur 

and Maguindanao. Comelec 

figures show that it was in these 

two provinces that the president 

posted her biggest winning margins 

in the whole of Mindanao. 

Zuce’s story is partly corroborated 

by the testimony of Capt. 

Mendoza, who said he accompanied 

the commissioner’s nephew 

to various canvass centers in 

Lanao and Cotabato from May 

12 to 18. There, he said, he saw 

Zuce speaking with provincial 

Comelec officials, following up 

election results with them, and 

giving them cash. 

Partial corroboration is also 

provided by the phone call the 

president made to Garcillano 

on May 29, where she is heard 

asking the commissioner if she 

would still get a one-million-vote 

lead. The commissioner said so 

far her lead was 980,000 “pero 

mag-compensate po sa Lanao 

‘yan (but we will compensate in 

Lanao),” as he was still expecting 

the poll results from seven more 

towns in Lanao del Sur. 

When he said that, Garcillano 

was either being prescient or he 

had already worked things out 


E L E C T I O N S 2 0 0 4 

on the ground. By the time that 

phone call was made, the initial 

results of the Lanao del Sur canvass 

had already been sent to 

Manila four days before. But in 

seven Lanao towns, the counting 

had been delayed, either 

because special elections needed 

to be called or allegedly because 

the canvassers were deliberately 

prolonging the count because of 

“special operations.” The results 

of the special elections, which 

were held on May 22 and June 5, 

were particularly suspicious. In 

Madalum, for example, Arroyo 

led Poe by 30 votes to one. The 

winning ratios in the special elections 

were far more scandalous 

than those in the earlier Lanao 

results: 4.5 votes for Arroyo for 

every one of FPJ’s, even as the 

overall provincial ratio was only 

three votes to one. In all, the 

president got 30,447 votes in 

the special elections—enough 

to get her the one-million-vote 

lead. Poe, on the other hand got 

only 6,805. 

But Sumalipao, the Lanao del 

Sur election officer, is adamant. 

There was no way cheating 

could have taken place there, 

he says. “There were 50 lawyers 

there during the canvassing, 20 

from the opposition,” he says. 

“They were watching every time 

I opened a COC. How can I add 

or subtract votes? I am willing to 

be killed if they find even just 

one vote added to GMA or one 

vote taken from FPJ.” 

Namfrel’s Dalidig, who has 

been watching Lanao elections 

since 1992, is equally firm. He 

says that 2004 was the worst 

case of dagdag-bawas he has 

ever seen. The opposition could 

not prevent it, he says, because 

they didn’t have enough people 

to guard the count. “This is the 

worst, the dirtiest election.” 

governorship in 1998 but lost. 

In 2004, he founded the Lanao 

Unity Movement for Gloria 

Macapagal-Arroyo. Mike Arroyo 

was even there during the 

induction of its officers in April 

that year. Moner told “The Probe 

Team” he aligned himself with 

the Arroyos through the intercession 

of his brother-in-law, who 

was an assistant of Alfonso Cusi, 

a close friend of the First Gentleman 

and then general manager 

of the Philippine Ports Authority. 

He said his group volunteered to 

campaign for President Arroyo 

and to help her win in Muslim 

Mindanao. 

Abdul Wahab Batugan, a 

former Comelec election officer 

and Moner’s business partner in 

a consultancy firm, recounted 

that the judge had “assigned” 

him to Lanao del Sur during 

the counting. He recalled that 

on May 13, 2004, he and Moner 

went to Marawi to talk to election 

officers there about how to 

make the president win. “We 

talked to them para baliktarin 

yung COCs (to reverse the certificates 

of canvass),” he says. 

They also brought cash with 

them, money that they said was 

given to Moner by Cusi and the 

First Gentleman. For the Lanao 

del Sur operations, says Batugan, 

they distributed about P1 million 

in cash to elections personnel. 

“Yung iba, pagbigay namin ng 

pera, kami na nag-fill up…Kami 

na ang nagsulat ng numero 

sa COC (In some cases, after 

giving the money, we filled up 

the forms ourselves, we wrote 

out the numbers in the COCs),” 

he said. 

Batugan admitted that it was 

in Marawi where they manufactured 

several COCs. “I remember 

the one in Wao,” he said in Tagalog. 

“I think it was 7,000 votes 

for FPJ and 3,000 plus for GMA. 

Tapos binaligtad. Nabaligtad. 

Ganu’n ang nangyari. (It was 

reversed. It got reversed. That’s 

what happened.)” 

The paper trail proves 

Batugan right. The precinctlevel 

election returns collected 

by Namfrel show that Poe got 

7,647 votes in Wao, while Mrs. 

Arroyo got only 3,816. But the 

ratio was indeed reversed in the 

certificate of canvass, where the 

president’s votes mysteriously 

doubled to 7,614, while Poe’s 

were reduced to only 4,967. 

The reason Batugan and his 

friends are talking now is that 

they feel betrayed. They said 

they took part in several dagdagbawas 

operations, not just in 

Lanao del Sur but also in other 

places in Muslim Mindanao. 

But more than a year after 

the elections, they had not 

yet been given the rewards 

they were promised. In fact, in 

September 2004, two members 

of the Lanao Unity Movement 

wrote Pampanga Rep. Juan 

Miguel ‘Mikey’ Arroyo, saying 

that during the canvassing, they 

had gone to Jolo “to facilitate 

and ensure that all votes be 

for PGMA in consideration for 

an amount of money given to 

each BEI (board of election 

inspectors) and local election 

officer.” 

The letter also said that they 

had not been given much money 

for their efforts but they did the 

work because of the promise of 

government jobs. “But somehow,” 

the letter observed ruefully, “their 

dangerous role in PGMA victory as 

far as the two provinces of Lanao 

and Sulu are concerned” had not 

been duly rewarded. 

The letter was ignored. 

Meanwhile, the ghosts of the 

2004 elections haunt Lanao del 

Sur, and they refuse to rest. 

i 

With additional research by 

Avigail Olarte . 

PARALLEL 

OPERATIONS 

The extent of the vote-padding 

and shaving was probably due 

to the fact that more than one 

group was at work. Even as Garcillano 

and Zuce were performing 

their tasks, another group of 

operators, this one linked to the 

First Gentleman, was also operating 

in Lanao. The point man 

for this parallel operation was 

supposedly Moner, the shar’iah 

court judge who had become 

friendly with Mike Arroyo. 

Moner is a Maranao politician 

who ran for the Lanao del Sur 


I REPORT 

11

10 REASONS TO DOUBT THE 

YVONNE T. CHUA AND 

AVIGAIL OLARTE 

THE DEVIL is in 

the numbers. 

In the run-up to 

the 2004 elections, 

surveys predicted a 

neck-and-neck race 

between President 

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and 

leading opposition candidate 

Fernando Poe Jr. When the official 

canvassing closed, Arroyo 

got 40 percent of the votes, beating 

Poe by 3.5 percentage points. 

The legitimacy of Arroyo’s 

election has since come under 

question following the disclosure 

of the wiretapped 

conversations between her and 

former elections commissioner 

Virgilio Garcillano suggesting 

her knowledge and possible 

involvement in electoral fraud, 

including vote padding, and its 

cover-up. But there are other 

indicators that all was not well 

in last year’s elections. Election 

officials, experts, and observers 

point to numerous statistical 

improbabilities. Here is a 

list of at least 10 that indicate 

some people were naughty 

and not at all nice during the 

2004 polls: 

1 

1. Unusual jump in number of registered voters: The country’s population increases by 

roughly 2.3 percent each year. This means about five percent between 2002 and 2004. 

Yet, the Commission on Elections listed 43.5 million registered voters in the 2004 

elections, or a 15-percent jump over the 2002 figure. The Comelec has justified the 

unusual trend, saying there appeared to be a “heightened awareness/enthusiasm of 

voters to exercise suffrage.” 

2Province 

Election Year 

Increase (%) 

1998- 2001- 2002- 

Registered 

1998 2001 2002 2004 

2001 2002 2004 

voters 34,117,056 36,350,561 37,724,463 43,536,028 6.5 3.8 15.4 

2. Number of registered voters exceeds Comelec projections: In the provinces 

of Pampanga, Cebu, Iloilo, and Bohol, which delivered the largest chunks of 

the president’s winning margin over Poe, the number of registered voters in 

the end far exceeded the number of voters that Comelec expected to register. 

Projected Registered 

Voters 

Registered 

Voters* 

Increase (%) 

Pampanga 944,092 1,080,751 14 

Cebu 1,299,612 1,780,708 37 

Iloilo 787,580 923,262 17 

Bohol 556,579 619,139 11 

*Per provincial certificate of canvass 

4. Number of actual voters exceeds number of 

registered voters 

Municipality 

Sumisip, Basilan 

Panguntaran, Sulu 

55. Too popular outside bailiwick: For every 

Kapampangan who voted for Poe, 7.5 voted for 

Arroyo. For every Cebuano who voted for Poe, 7.8 

voted for Arroyo. Historically, says Philippine Daily 

Inquirer columnist Conrado de Quiros, “(not) one 

of the past presidents has shown himself to be as 

popular, if not more so, in a province other than 

his own.” He cited as examples the late strongman 

Ferdinand Marcos who was strongest in the Ilocos 

and Arroyo’s own father, the late Diosdado Macapagal, 

who showed himself strongest in Pampanga. 

Province 

Pampanga 

Cebu 

Registered 

Voters 

22,669 

11,080 

Arroyo 

642,712 

965,630 

Actual 

Voters 

23,745 

11,468 

Poe 

84,720 

123,099 

33. Votes cast for all presidential candidates exceed actual voters. 

Province 

Registered 

Voters 

Actual Voters 

Votes for 

President 

Official 

Voter 

Turnout 

Voter Turnout 

(President) 

Difference (% 

Points) 

Basilan 117,190 106,334 136,297 91% 116% 26 

Nueva Vizcaya 154,958 117,999 150,371 76% 97% 21 

Samar 284,485 228,075 278,045 80% 98% 18 

Aurora 77,669 61,475 73,194 79% 94% 15 

Isabela 607,209 465,181 515,974 77% 85% 8 

Albay 541,865 458,207 479,714 85% 89% 4 

Sultan Kudarat 313,701 226,522 236,768 72% 75% 3 

North Cotabato 513,291 387,666 404,268 76% 79% 3 

Lanao del Norte 432,698 307,790 314,577 71% 73% 2 


2 0 0 4 E L E C T I O N S 

2004 ELECTION RESULTS 

6 7 

6. Zero vote for highly popular candidate: A 1966 Supreme Court 

ruling says a zero vote is statistically improbable. But the highly 

popular Poe failed to garner a single vote in a lot of places, including 

Sto. Tomas town in his home province of Pangasinan and in several 

Maguindanao municipalities where rival Arroyo’s total votes equaled 

the number of actual voters (another statistical improbability). Comelec 

Chair Benjamin Abalos Sr. has argued that while a zero vote may 

be highly improbable, it is still possible, and cited several factors like 

“Church influence, patriarchal dominance, guns, and gold” that could 

make it so. Asked about zero votes in last year’s elections, Garcillano 

told newsmen, “If there is a zero, that is possible because they 

could buy the watcher of the opposite side.” 

Municipality 

Sto. Tomas, Pangasinan 

Ampatuan, Maguindanao 

Datu Piang, Maguindanao 

88. Presidential candidate more popular than local candidate: In the 

South district of Cebu City, Arroyo turned out to be more popular than 

the local candidate, Rep. Antonio Cuenco. 

Candidate Votes Actual Voters % of Votes 

Obtained 

Arroyo 117,435 169,923 69% 

Cuenco 88,556 169,923 52% 

99. Unusually high winning ratio: Popularity-wise, Arroyo did not hold a candle to Poe. But in areas where she posted her biggest winning 

margins like Cebu, Arroyo led Poe by as much as 22 to one. By comparison, Poe’s lead over Arroyo was at most five times in places 

where he got his biggest winning margins. Election officials recall that Joseph Estrada, the runaway winner in the 1998 elections, led his 

closest opponent, Jose de Venecia, by five to one. Arroyo’s running mate, the extremely popular Noli de Castro, led Loren Legarda by only 

two to eight times in areas like Pampanga, Cebu, Iloilo, Bohol, Bukidnon, and Southern Leyte. 

ARROYO VS POE IN CEBU 

Municipality 

Catmon 

Alacsia 

Bogo 

Arroyo 

10,270 

8,629 

27,134 

Registered 

Voters 

6,737 

9,616 

17,688 

Poe 

459 

406 

1,523 

Actual Voters 

5,668 

9,321 

17,250 

Arroyo:Poe 

22:1 

21:1 

18:1 

10. Padding and shaving: New-media pioneer Roberto Verzola believes Arroyo did not win by 1.1 million votes. Using the Namfrel tally 

(based on elections returns) and the official count of Congress (based on Certificates of Canvass), he calculated Arroyo could have won by 

156,000 votes at most, or Poe by 84,000 votes. He said the Namfrel tally is “probably closer to the truth” because it is harder to tamper 

with 216,000-plus election returns than with 180 COCs. Congress said Arroyo posted a 3.5-percent margin over Poe, while the Namfrel tally 

placed this at 2.6 percent. The biggest discrepancies between the Namfrel and congressional counts were in Basilan, Sultan Kudarat, Lanao 

del Norte, Tawi-Tawi, Lanao del Sur, and Maguindanao. 

Arroyo 

5,470 

9,321 

17,250 

De Castro 

8,714 

7,902 

15,593 

Poe 

0 

0 

0 

Legarda 

1,520 

714 

8,502 

7. Votes for presidential candidate exceed votes for No. 1 senatorial 

candidate: Voters almost always write down names for senatorial 

and local posts on their ballots, but not necessarily make a 

selection for president. Also, voters can choose only one presidential 

candidate but can pick a dozen senatorial candidates at 

most. This makes it extremely rare for a presidential candidate to 

obtain more votes than the leading senatorial candidate. In Bohol, 

however, Arroyo garnered more votes than the leading senatorial 

candidate, including former Bohol representative Ernesto Herrera 

and Manuel Roxas III (who eventually topped the senatorial 

race), in 30 of 48 municipalities (60 percent). Ditto for Pampanga, 

bailiwick of both the president and Sen. Lito Lapid. Even in his 

hometown, Lapid had fewer votes than Arroyo. Similar patterns 

were detected in Iloilo, Siquijor, and Leyte provinces. 

BOHOL 

Municipality Arroyo Top Senate Bet Difference 

Anda 5,022 Roxas – 3,632 1,390 

Antequera 5,070 Herrera – 3,701 1,369 

Carmen 12,420 Roxas – 9,166 3,254 

Catigbian 7,177 Roxas – 5,141 2,036 

Ubay 16,850 Roxas – 14,155 2,695 

PAMPANGA 

Municipality Arroyo Top Senate Bet Difference 

Floridablanca 31,399 Lapid - 28,448 2,951 

Guagua 38,205 Lapid - 34,246 3,959 

Lubao 45,085 Lapid - 39,617 5,468 

Porac 30,119 Lapid - 28,513 1,606 

De Castro: 

Legarda 

6:1 

11:1 

2:1 

POE VS ARROYO IN LAGUNA 

Municipality 

Mabitac 

Magdalena 

Pagsanjan 

Poe Arroyo Poe: 

Arroyo 

5,742 

6,589 

10,065 

1,186 

1,420 

1,978 

5:1 

5:1 

5:1 

Region 

ARMM 

C. Mindanao 

CAR 

Congress 

Arroyo 

% 

61.9 

32.2 

39.5 

Poe 

% 

30.6 

39.2 

26.1 

Arroyo 

% 

38.8 

24 

38 

Namfrel 

Poe 

% 

58 

44.5 

28.6 

Discrepancy 

% 

50.5 

13.5 

4.1 

Region 

Sulu* 

Basilan** 

Tawi-Tawi*** 

Congress 

78,429 60,807 23,896 

79,702 48,685 12,162 

33,634 49,803 15,925 

Namfrel 

Arroyo Poe Arroyo Poe 

45,740 

43,821 

58,292 

*100% Namfrel coverage **

Impervious to 

change. Despite all 

the controversies 

that have hounded 

Comelec, the poll 

body is resisting 

reform. 

CAN COMELEC 

REFORM? 

ALECKS P. PABICO 

ANYONE STILL 

wondering why 

Pinoys are voting 

with their feet 

and heading for 

abroad in droves 

only has to look 

at the “Hello, Garci” scandal that 

exposed an alleged plot to rig 

the 2004 elections in President 

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s favor. 

For those who still need convincing 

that this country’s electoral 

system is a mess, as Exhibit 

B we have the Commission on 

Elections (Comelec), which has 

so far been largely mum on the 

scandal that has even prompted 

one of its former officials to go 

missing. And that’s on top of a 

series of questionable acts of 

commission and omission it has 

been doing for years. 

This is why even before 

President Arroyo thought of 

calling up then Commissioner 

Virgilio Garcillano at the height 

of the canvassing of votes last 

year, civil-society organizations 

were already pushing hard for 

far-reaching electoral reforms. 

They wanted to start with the 

Comelec, but its leaders just 

wouldn’t budge—and one year 

and one regime-shaking scandal 

later, they still aren’t moving. 

That means any change in the 

system is also at a standstill. Says 

an exasperated Akbayan partylist 

Rep. Etta Rosales: “(When) 

you speak of electoral reforms, 

the Comelec will have to be integral 

to the reform effort since 

one of the first things you have 

to reform is Comelec itself.” 

Still, it’s not as if other branches 

of government shouldn’t get 

off their duffs, too. A conservative 

Congress, for example, is 

definitely in the way of electoral 

reforms. Many initiatives require 

legislation and constitutional 

amendments. For instance, 

several of the recommendations 

made by the Consortium for 

Election and Political Process 

Strengthening (CEPPS) mission 

that monitored the 2004 elections 

require a drastic overhaul of the 

Comelec’s legal and constitutional 

framework. These include: 

• making the Comelec a 

purely administrative entity; 

• doing away with the con- 

gressional canvass of presidential 

and vice-presidential votes, 

since the counting and tabulation 

is the responsibility of the 

election administration; 

• removing from the Comelec 

its quasi-judicial function of 

deciding on electoral protests, 

a function which can be taken 

up by special electoral tribunals; 

and 

• restructuring the composition 

of the House and Senate 

electoral tribunals so as not 

to expose the process to bias, 

real or perceived. 

Since its reconstitution in 

1987, however, Congress has 

consistently sat on vital political 

and electoral reforms that could 

have at the very least arrested 

the degeneration of a system 

of government that Arroyo and 

House Speaker Jose de Venecia 

now rue about and conveniently 

want replaced. 

THWARTED IN 

CONGRESS 

For example, a reform-minded 

legislature should have long 

passed the anti-dynasty bill, 

which was introduced as early 

as the Eighth Congress, to fully 

enable the constitutional provision 

that bans political dynasties. 

Such a law has not been enacted 

since many Congress members 

come from long lines of political 

families who refuse to legislate 

themselves out of public office. 

Also still pending in the 

legislature is what political 

and electoral reform advocates 

consider as the most essential 

piece of legislation, the Political 

Party Reform Act, which was 

introduced in 2003 in the 12th 

Congress. The law seeks to provide 

the needed impetus for the 

development of parties based 

on platforms and programs, 

rather than on individuals and 

influence. Among its salient 

provisions are: 

• regulating the conduct of 

political parties, including the 

selection of leaders by party 

congress; 

• minimum funding by the 

state to duly registered national 

parties; 

• regulating campaign financing 

and spending, including 

restricting individual campaign 

contributions; 

• banning “turncoatism” or the 

rampant practice of switching 

political affiliation that weakens 

party structures, confuses 

voters, and undermines the 

concept of a viable opposition 

(An anti-turncoatism bill 

was first filed in the Eighth 

Congress.) 

For a bill certified as urgent 

by the Legislative Executive 

Development Advisory Council 

(LEDAC), only one hearing has 

so far been conducted by the 

Senate committee chaired by 

Sen. Richard Gordon, while it 

still has to be calendared by the 

House committee chaired by 

Rep. Teodoro Locsin Jr. 

And while another important 

law, the Party List System Act, 

was passed in 1995, it was a 

compromised piece of legislation. 

No less than the Supreme 

Court pointed out its basic flaws: 

the prohibitive existing threshold 

of two percent leaving congressional 

seats vacant, and its lack 

of any clearly defined eligibility 

criteria. Since being introduced 

in August 2004, amendments to 

the law, which include clarifying 

eligibility requirements, lowering 

the threshold to 1.8 percent, and 

increasing the maximum number 


R E F O R M I N G E L E C T I O N S 

NEED FOR SOCIAL 

SOLUTION 

For IT pioneer Roberto Verzola, 

the issue is not so much technical 

as it is social. Hence, the 

electoral reform campaign battlecry 

must be first and foremost 

to punish the election cheats. 

“Cheating in elections is a social 

problem,” he argues. “So this 

needs a social solution, not just 

technical. Of course, there are 

technical problems in the election 

process like the slow count, 

transmission of results, and there 

are technical solutions for that.” 

But until the election cheats are 

punished, Verzola insists, even 

a computerized system will not 

ensure clean and orderly polls. 

Firm believers in the buof 

seats per party from three to 

six, have reached the committee 

level only this May. 

Rosales says she was 

surprised that the party-list 

representation was not part 

of the draft of constitutional 

change proposals in the House. 

“They say it’s because we are 

introducing amendments to 

the Party List Law already,” 

she says. “That’s true, but the 

amendments that we are doing 

are with the law, not with 

the constitutional provision. 

There are really efforts to gloss 

over or give lesser priority to 

reforms. They would rather 

have the status quo, rather than 

democratize.” 

With another mid-term elections 

scheduled in 2007, the 

election modernization and 

automation law also has to be 

amended. Points out Gus Lagman, 

technology chief of the 

National Citizens’ Movement 

for Free Elections (Namfrel): 

“There’s a real sense of urgency 

since in 18 months, we’ll have 

another round of elections. RA 

8436 requires a lot of amendments. 

The bidding process 

will take at least six months. 

And that does not include voter 

education.” 

But Lagman is pessimistic 

about anything substantial being 

done with the present crop of 

election commissioners. “We tried 

talking to them,” he says. “It’s useless. 

Iba ang frame of mind.” 

A FLAWED APPOINT- 

MENT PROCESS 

Ah, yes, the Comelec and its 

commissioners. As early as 

June, electoral-reform advocates 

have been demanding 

the courtesy resignations of 

all the commissioners. At the 

minimum, the call has been to 

get rid of those who have been 

guilty of violating their responsibilities 

and oaths of office. 

But former Comelec chairman 

Christian Monsod even goes as 

far as suggesting current chief 

Benjamin Abalos Sr. should 

be shown the door through 

the most expedient means 

possible, including through 

impeachment, because “a reform 

program is at great risk 

of not being achieved while 

he’s there.” 

Since Day One, though, 

Abalos has resisted calls for 

him to step down, arguing that 

the fault of one is not the fault 

of everybody. Moreover, as a 

constitutional body, the Comelec 

is less accountable to the 

other branches of government 

and the public, as the commissioners 

can be removed only 

through an impeachment process. 

Unfortunately, impeaching 

the commissioners is not an 

inviting prospect at this time, 

especially after what happened 

to the impeachment complaints 

against Arroyo. 

Rosales, who was among the 

first 41 House members who endorsed 

the amended complaint 

against Arroyo, says, “It was a 

very negative experience. After 

that, nobody will stand up in 

Congress to try to impeach an 

impeachable official.” 

Some also see a problem 

with the resignation call since 

the appointing authority remains 

the same official alleged to have 

benefited from electoral fraud. In 

July, Arroyo appointed Romeo 

Brawner, the former Court of 

Appeals presiding justice, to 

replace Garcillano. Word has 

it that she will be reappointing 

Manuel Barcelona Jr. to the other 

vacant post—unpalatable news 

to reformists, as Barcelona was a 

member of a pro-Arroyo organization 

that had contributed to 

the president’s campaign. 

“The problem with the 

whole appointment process is 

that the president is the sole 

appointing power,” says Ramon 

Casiple, executive director of 

the Institute for Political and 

Electoral Reform (IPER). “It’s not 

like in the judiciary where you 

have the Judicial and Bar Council. 

Whatever name we give to 

Malacañang, those whom you’ve 

never heard of are the ones who 

are appointed.” 

What makes the appointment 

issue even more pressing 

is that by next year, two 

commissioners—Mehol Sadain 

and Rufino Javier—are also 

up for retirement. Casiple says 

that especially at this juncture 

when the Comelec badly needs 

to modernize, premium should 

be on appointees that do not 

only have the integrity but are 

relatively young, IT-proficient, 

and preferably possessed with 

managerial skills. 

At 70, Justice Brawner, while 

a man of integrity, is deficient in 

such requirements, says Casiple. 

“He also has no background in 

electoral processes,” adds IPER’s 

head. “While he may be learned 

in the law, I don’t know if he can 

run an election without going 

through a learning curve.” 

Some commissioners in fact 

are pinning much of their reform 

hopes on a more tech-savvy 

Comelec. The soon-to-be-retired 

Sadain, for one, says, “We 

had very bright prospects in 

implementing electoral reforms, 

especially with computerization 

that we had wanted to be implemented 

last year.” But somehow 

the commission bungled that, 

too, in the process losing P2.3 

billion of taxpayers’ money. 

reaucracy like Monsod, however, 

want to give reforms a chance 

even on a piecemeal basis. 

Monsod likes to hark back to the 

1992 elections when the Comelec 

had a net approval rating of 

+64, a testament he says that it is 

possible to reform even the most 

damaged of institutions. 

Besides, those pushing for 

changes acknowledge that there 

are many honest people within 

the poll body who want to do 

right. “We have to think of ways 

by which we can bring back 

courage,” says former education 

undersecretary Chito Gascon. 

“That’s what we lack now, the 

courage of the people who 

know the facts. The enemies 

are throwing the book, rule of 

law, due process as mechanisms 

to prevent us from uncovering 

the truth.” 

Comelec officials like Ferdinand 

Rafanan, election director 

for the National Capital Region, 

are already doing their share to 

clean up the process. On its own 

initiative, the NCR regional office 

has placed special emphasis on 

voter education. Begun just this 

July, the modest efforts, with 

no funding or material support 

of any kind from the national 

office, have so far been able to 

reach senior high school and 

college students in nine Metro 

Manila schools. 

Though targeted at students, 

Comelec-NCR’s voters’ education 

program is also intended to 

deliver the message to Comelec 

personnel about the proper conduct 

of elections, the nature of 

their work, and what tasks are 

required of them. NCR personnel 

are thus being reintroduced to 

their profession, getting training 

on how to satisfy voters’ needs, 

use computers and modernize 

work processes, and eliminate 

graft and corruption in the issuance 

of certified copies of 

documents. 

Yet while these are laudable 

efforts and have their place 

in the pursuit of political and 

electoral reforms, the magnitude 

of the problem is such that 

reform advocates have their 

eyes set more on long-term, 

structural changes. As Byron 

Bocar, Rosales’s chief-of-staff, 

puts it, “Elections are held only 

once every three years. But bad 

governance arising from a bad 

electoral system occurs day to 

day. We’re witness to its fatal 

results.” 

i 


I REPORT 

15

Fighting corruption. The military 

and the police are considered 

among the most corrupt state 

agencies, but there are reformers 

within, including members of the 

Christian Officers Reform the 

Police Service (CORPS) below. 

OFFICERS 

WHO SAY NO 

LUZ RIMBAN 

HI S J O B t i t l e 

was impressive 

enough: aide de 

camp and executive 

assistant to 

the interior and 

local gover n- 

ment secretary. It was, however, 

a deskbound posting that 

consisted mostly of shuffling 

documents needing his boss’s 

signature. That was a decade 

ago, and Cesar Binag was then 

a young police captain fresh 

from a stint with the elite Special 

Action Force (SAF) that battled 

coup plotters and insurgents. To 

Binag, who was trained in the 

Philipppine Military Academy 

(PMA), his new assignment was 

boring. Or at least that’s how it 

seemed at first. 

One day a friend invited him 

for dinner. Binag quickly accepted, 

perhaps thinking it was 

going to be a nice break from 

the drudgery of his job. Instead, 

his friend served up a temptation, 

a situation Binag would 

find himself in repeatedly. 

When his friend turned up, 

he had in tow a foreign businessman 

with an eye on a 

P250-million contract the department 

was bidding out. The 

businessman’s proposition was 

simple: Binag would provide a 

copy of a document detailing the 

contract’s specifications, thereby 

giving the foreigner an edge in 

the bidding war. In exchange, 

Binag would get 1.5 percent of 

the contract budget, or P3.75 

million. Half that amount was 

his for the taking right there and 

then, if he accepted. 

“Politely I said to them, ‘I 

cannot do that,’” recounts Binag, 

now in his late 30s. “So I called 

the waiter, paid my bill, and 

then left.” 

Not everyone would have 

reacted the same way Binag 

did. Indeed, others would 

have grabbed this chance of a 

lifetime. After all, the public 

sees the police force as a corrupt 

organization and a policeman 

as an officer making easy 

money extorting a few hundred 

pesos from motorists on the 

streets. How could a policeman 

resist a bribe that was almost 

P4 million? 

Binag isn’t exactly a rebel 

or a maverick but it seems the 

country’s armed services do 

have their share of officers who 

know how to just say no. For a 

time, this had been hard for the 

public even to imagine, espe- 


R E F O R M I N T H E B A R R A C K S 

cially after the media exposé on 

Gen. Carlos Garcia, the former 

armed forces comptroller who 

has landed in jail for amassing 

wealth beyond the imagination 

even of a military man. But since 

Brig. Gen. Francisco Gudani appeared 

before the Senate Committee 

on National Defense to 

expose political maneuverings 

in the fraud-ridden 2004 elections, 

the public has become 

reacquainted with the idea that 

there could be more than a few 

good men in organizations as 

tainted with corruption as the 

Philippine National Police (PNP) 

and the Armed Forces of the 

Philippines (AFP). 

“I am here as assistant superintendent 

of the PMA where we 

teach the cadets the honor code, 

that a cadet does not cheat, does 

not steal, does not lie nor tolerate 

these things,” Gudani said at 

the Senate in September. The 

general also made it a point to 

identify himself as the president 

of the Military Christian Fellowship 

(MCF), a loose grouping of 

Christians in the AFP. With that, 

he allowed civilians a peek at 

another way in which idealists in 

armed services have managed to 

hold up against the entrenched 

corruption within and pressures 

from politicians without. 

Gudani earned praise from 

some civilians who thought 

he did the right thing. That he 

placed himself in peril, defying 

a presidential order against military 

officers appearing before 

congressional inquiries only 

added an aura of heroism to his 

Senate appearance. 

Gudani has said he simply did 

not get the Malacañang order in 

time. Be that as it may, he would 

not have been the first idealist in 

the military faced with a moral 

dilemma. In the past, soldiers 

who felt strongly against an order 

or questionable practices had 

quit or gone AWOL. Others have 

tried to stage coups or mutinies. 

Because the structure does not 

provide support for those who 

want to remain upright and honest, 

in the end those who prevail 

are the men and women with 

strong moral fiber. For many, 

this fortitude to withstand temptation 

comes largely from a very 

deep sense of patriotism. For 

others, such love of country is 

enhanced by the moral conviction 

provided by the teachings 

of their elders or coming from 

their respective faiths. 

HONOR AND LOYALTY 

Officers who graduated from the 

PMA are supposed to be guided 

by the honor code to help them 

remain on the right path. But 

then they also swear by an oath 

of loyalty authored by the 19 th - 

century U.S. publisher and writer 

Elbert Hubbard. It says: “If you 

work for a man, in heaven’s 

name work for him. Speak well 

of him and stand by the institution 

he represents. Remember 

an ounce of loyalty is worth 

a pound of cleverness. If you 

growl, condemn and eternally 

find fault, resign your position. 

And when you are outside, 

damn to your hearts’ content. 

But for as long as you are part of 

the institution, do not condemn 

it. If you do, the first high wind 

that comes along will blow you 

away, and you will probably 

never know why.” 

The oath is a pledge of submission 

used all over the world 

in various organizations, such 

as the U.S. Federal Bureau of 

Investigation (FBI), and by superiors 

and bosses to enforce what 

some people say is blind loyalty. 

Explicit in the oath is a promise 

not to blow the whistle on an 

organization to which one belongs. 

It seems to clash with the 

PMA honor code, which tacitly 

urges officers to speak out when 

they witness wrongdoing. 

There is a lot wrong in the 

PNP, as there is with the AFP 

and the rest of the government. 

Aside from graft and corruption, 

there is also what Binag calls 

“bata-bata” system or higher ups 

playing favorites among their 

subordinates. There are the 

dilemmas over jueteng, the illegal 

numbers game from which 

it is said police officers enrich 

themselves by offering protection 

from the law. 

Binag, now a superintendent 

and chief of the PNP’s resource 

reform unit, is a born-again 

Christian. When he talks about 

“conversion,” though, he means 

not the welcoming of a newcomer 

to his faith, but the practice of 

transferring or realigning funds 

intended for other purposes 

that in the process often end up 

in the pockets of corrupt officers. 

Conversion was one of the 

main problems exposed by the 

group of discontented junior 

AFP officers who laid siege to 

the Oakwood Hotel in Makati 

in July 2003. 

“Here, if you partake of free 

lunch, I believe you’re part of the 

system because strictly the budget 

has no room for a free lunch,” 

Binag points out. ”Somewhere 

along the way, one item was 

converted into another item and 

that’s why it became lunch.” 

Army Lt. Col. Amadeo Azul 

feels the same way about conversion 

in the Armed Forces. 

Marching to a different rhythm. 

Police Supt. Cesar Binag 

(above) has turned down bribes 

and believes that it is possible 

to make the police a more 

accountable institution. 

Many years ago, as a young 

lieutenant, he had rebuked his 

“goodhearted” commandant for 

converting an item in the budget 

into a P1,000 Christmas bonus 

for the staff. He was told, “ I 

wish everyone were like you but 

I’m only doing this to boost the 

morale.” Unlike the rest of the 

staff, Azul wound up with no 

bonus; he was also left worrying 

that while such gestures are 

well meant, they could also be 

openings for serious transgressions 

later on. 

Azul, also a born-again Christian, 

says he is not cut out to 

be a whistleblower or to wash 

the AFP’s dirty linen in public. 

“The Bible says if your brother 

commits a mistake, go to him, 

rebuke him. If he does not listen, 

bring another…tell it to the whole 

church,” he said. That frame of 

mind has led him away from 

antagonistic confrontations with 

wrongdoers, and even the military 

practice of humiliating subordinates 

in public. Over time, 

he said, he has learned to choose 

whom to criticize and how, quoting 

another biblical passage: 

“Rebuke a wise man and he will 

be wiser. Rebuke a wicked man 

and he will hate you.” 

The dilemmas can be tormenting 

for soldiers striving to 

live upright lives, like Azul. That 

is why when Azul was contacted 

for this story he declined to 


I REPORT 

17

R E F O R M I N T H E B A R R A C K S 

be interviewed at first. Azul 

was once the secretary of the 

MCF. Azul is also a member of 

PMA Class of 1983, which also 

produced Lt. Col. Alexander 

Balutan, the Marine officer who 

testified with Gudani at the Senate. 

Azul taught physics at the 

Academy and was at one point 

battalion commander of the 

Army’s 64th Infantry Batallion 

in Samar. He is currently posted 

at J5, the plans office of the AFP 

General Headquarters in Camp 

Aguinaldo. 

Azul agreed to talk to PCIJ 

only outside his office and on 

a Sunday at a church where he 

attends service. It is a gleaming 

glass-and-steel structure that 

looks like the headquarters 

of a conglomerate. Its pastors 

look like yuppies. In these surroundings 

and out of his uniform, 

Azul himself looked like 

a young businessman taking 

a hard-earned respite. And he 

talked more as a Christian than 

as a soldier. 

“The hard part is the battle 

within,” said Azul. The challenges, 

he said, range from resisting 

the martial culture that automatically 

insists on applying hardline 

solutions to social problems, and 

vices that machos in the military 

are known for, such as womanizing 

and drinking. 

Speaking one’s mind, even 

in the name of the teachings 

of the Gospel, can have grave 

repercussions in the military. 

An officer can get relieved of 

his post or court-martialed as 

in Gudani’s case, or he can be 

totally ignored, bypassed, or 

misunderstood. 

Azul talked of looking at 

things now from a different 

perspective. Where before he 

would turn bitter over reprisals 

from higher-ups for what his 

Christian faith made him do, 

he now would rather act as a 

bridge between two seemingly 

incompatible paradigms. 

A BALANCING ACT 

In truth, being a spiritual person 

on the one hand and being soldiers 

and policemen on the other 

can sometimes mean walking a 

perilous tightrope. But both Azul 

and Binag seem to have found a 

comfortable balance. Both deny 

being purists, but talk of reforming 

long-entrenched flaws in 

their organizations bit by bit, and 

mostly by infecting their respective 

“spheres of influence.” 

Today Azul says he has a 

chance to effect some change 

by helping formulate planning 

and budgeting policies in the 

AFP. Budgets used to be drawn 

up by office-bound people who 

had no idea of the needs out in 

the field where conditions are 

fluid. The practice used to be 

that budgets were drawn up just 

to access the fund and didn’t reflect 

the realities in the field. As 

a result, money was set aside for 

uses not suited to war zones and 

had to be converted later into 

purchases of what the men in 

the trenches did need—that is, 

if abusive commanders weren’t 

pocketing the funds. 

The present AFP is trying to 

implement a budgeting system 

that Azul described as “rationalizing 

resource allocation and 

ensuring it goes to the right uses” 

and a mechanism where planning 

and budgeting are “properly 

linked.” If it works well, 

conversion would be radically 

minimized, unless one happened 

to be really corrupt. 

If Azul talks like a manager, 

it is also because he has had 

postgraduate management training, 

as did Binag and his friends 

in their Christian group called 

CORPS, an acronym for Christian 

Officers Reform the Police Service. 

Binag’s friends in CORPS 

have become his refuge and 

“accountability” group where 

they check on each other’s 

spiritual, moral, and professional 

difficulties 

It helps that officers like Azul 

and Binag took up management 

studies in institutions such as the 

University of the Philippines, the 

Asian Institute of Management, or 

even schools overseas, where they 

were exposed to better and more 

effective ways of doing things. 

Binag, who has run the range 

of police duties from being 

police station commander to 

heading the PNP’s Traffic Management 

Group, likewise talks 

about having ordered time-andmotion 

studies to identify bottlenecks 

in the PNP units where 

he has been posted. He says 

leadership trainings are passing 

on effective management styles 

to potential young leaders in 

PNP offices where reforms are 

most needed. CORPS also has 

a mentoring program called 

“My Brother’s Keeper” and the 

“Bless Our Cops” campaign that 

invites the public to support 

policemen. 

RESTORING HOPE, 

IMPLEMENTING 

REFORMS 

But a major obstacle has been 

the attitude of despair the public 

and even some PNP members 

have toward reform. Binag’s 

only request to classmates, civic 

leaders, and fellow policemen 

is, “Don’t lose hope.” Because 

reforms are grounded on the 

hope and the desire that things 

will change, Binag says, the first 

step is to restore hope. 

“Hope is not a method,” he 

says. “We’ve got to do something 

to operationalize hope. But it’s 

hard to say how if you don’t 

have hope.” 

Shooting for the moon? 

Reformers believe it is 

possible to bring back honor 

and integrity to the military 

and the police. 

Azul, though, said things are 

looking up in Camp Aguinaldo, 

adding that reforms were being 

instituted even before the Oakwood 

mutiny broke out, and even 

despite such cases as that of Gen. 

Garcia, himself a PMA alumnus. 

“The military is far, far better 

off now than it was in 1983 

when I was a 2nd lieutenant,” he 

said. In those days, there were 

no limits to drinking, and parties 

for officers even had Girard-Peter 

models in attendance. Today 

there are mechanisms to air grievances, 

among them the campaign 

“Text Mo Si Commander” where 

soldiers inform higher-ups of 

their problem. Higher ups are 

also listening to junior officers a 

lot more, a far cry from 20 years 

ago when “lieutenants were seen 

and not heard.” Top-down, bottom-up 

monitoring and reporting 

makes the organization more 

cohesive and a coup d’etat less 

probable, Azul said. 

Binag, too, doesn’t think a 

revolt is in the offing. But that’s 

because he earned his spurs 

defending the government. 

After all, in the SAF, which he 

had joined right after graduating 

from the PMA in 1987, he and 

his co-recruits were almost immediately 

fighting off coups that 

rocked the Aquino administration 

during its early years. 

Being in the frontlines defending 

the government comes 

naturally to men like Binag. 

What comes naturally to other 

members of the PNP and the 

AFP, however, may not necessarily 

be the same. 

i 


REPORTING 

UNDER 

THE GUN 

Fearing for her life. 

Journalist Mei Magsino- 

Lubis is on the run, 

fleeing threats from the 

most powerful man in 

her province. 

VINIA DATINGUINOO 

MELINDA ‘MEI’ 

Magsino-Lubis 

yearns for 

many things: 

her flower and 

herb garden, 

the sound of 

her husband’s voice, the kingfisher 

and maya birds that used to wake 

her up in the morning. All these 

she used to enjoy in her five-hectare 

mahogany farm on top of a 

hill, in the city of Batangas, around 

84 km. south of Manila. 

Even now her farm beckons 

to her like the smell of freshly 

brewed barako coffee. “It was 

paradise,” she says, “and it was 

my home.” 

But the farm—and husband— 

will have to wait, because Magsino-Lubis 

wants to live. She is 

convinced that had she not fled 

from Batangas one night last July 

she would now be dead. 

Magsino-Lubis is a correspondent 

of the Philippine Daily 

Inquirer for the Southern Luzon 

region and has been reporting 

on alleged irregularities in the 

Batangas provincial capitol. She 

believes her life is now in danger 

because her stories have angered 

the provincial governor, whom 

she has linked to questionable 

projects, among other things. 

The governor is Armando 

C. Sanchez. In Senate hearings 

probing jueteng, he was alleged 

to be one of the biggest operators 

of the illegal numbers game 

in the country. He also faces a 

graft case filed in the Office of 

the Ombudsman by his vice 

governor. Recently, the influential 

Roman Catholic Church 

leadership in Batangas openly 

declared its lack of confidence in 

the governor. (See sidebar) Yet, 

while he has the demeanor of a 

street toughie, Sanchez does not 

have a reputation for resorting to 

violence when dealing with his 

perceived enemies—at least not 

among the general public. 

But that is getting way ahead 

of Magsino-Lubis’s story. 

PHONED WARNING 

At around 10 in the evening of 

July 7 this year, Magsino-Lubis 

received a phone call from one of 

her police sources. She was told 

two prisoners from the provincial 

jail had just been released, with 

specific orders to kill her. She 

would have to leave Batangas 

immediately, her source said. 

That same night, Magsino- 

Lubis said goodbye to her family 

and left the farm, her home for 

only nine months, and Batangas, 

where she has lived for all her 

30 years. “Doon ako tinubuan 

ng sungay (That’s where I grew 

horns),” Magsino-Lubis says of 

her province. “But I did not 

have a choice (other than to 

leave).” In her backpack, she 

tucked five tops, three pairs of 

jeans, six pairs of underwear, 

four pairs of socks, documents, 

photographs, notepads, pens, 

and about P22,000 in cash. In 

her bones ran a cold, steady 

stream of fear. 

Not too long ago, Magsino-Lubis 

had felt relatively safe, since, 

she says, her employer was not 

some small, obscure community 

paper, but the country’s biggest 

daily. “Ang yabang ko noon (I 

was so confident then),” she says. 

Now she realizes she is—and has 

always been—as vulnerable as 

all the other journalists who had 

been hunted down and killed in 

some remote town. 

At least one international 

media watchdog has described 

the Philippines as “the most 

murderous of all” when it comes 

to media deaths, beating even 

those countries where drug lords 

reign or civil strife rages. Since 

1986, 54 Filipino journalists have 

been killed in the line of duty. 

Most of them were broadcasters 

working outside Metro Manila, 


J O U R N A L I S T A T R I S K 

and at the time of their deaths 

reporting or commenting on irregularities 

in their local governments. 

Of these cases, only two 

have resulted in the convictions 

of the assassins, according to 

the Center for Media Freedom 

and Responsibility (CMFR). No 

mastermind has ever been found 

and prosecuted. 

It is probably no comfort to 

Magsino-Lubis that elsewhere in 

the world, journalists who are 

killed often do not die while 

covering armed conflicts or some 

similar assignment. Instead, says 

the Committee to Project Journalists 

(CPJ), which studied more 

than five years of journalists’ 

death records from 2000, a huge 

majority are murdered in retaliation 

for their work. 

In Batangas itself, journalist 

Arnel Manalo was killed just last 

year, on August 5, when two 

men on a motorcycle ambushed 

him while he was on his way 

home on his jeep. He was shot 

twice, the bullets hitting the left 

side of the face and his neck. 

Manalo was a correspondent 

for the radio station DZRH and 

wrote a column for the local 

newspapers Dyaryo Veritas and 

Southern Tagalog. He did not 

mince words in his columns, at 

one point calling the governor 

“berdugo ng kapitolyo (tyrant 

of the capitol)” a month before 

he was killed, and also saying 

there was an “atmosphere of 

fear” among capitol employees 

in a follow-up piece. 

But Manalo was a member 

of the As-is barangay council as 

well, which was why the CMFR, 

in its report about his death, did 

not rule out political rivals as 

among the masterminds for his 

killing. Manalo’s family filed a 

case against someone said to be 

the triggerman; the case is still 

at the prosecutor’s office. The 

primary witness was another 

journalist, who testified that he 

heard the alleged triggerman 

planning the killing with the 

barangay captain, about whom 

Manalo had also written in the 

last two weeks of July 2004. The 

family did not file a case against 

the barangay captain. 

MURDERED 

OMBUDSMAN 

Magsino-Lubis, however, only 

has to think of Guillermo Gamo 

to feel particularly vulnerable. 

They had agreed to have a meeting 

on May 31. Gamo, who was 

the Batangas provincial ombudsman, 

had promised to talk to her 

and give her documents related 

to what he said were anomalous 

deals involving provincial officials. 

But the day before they 

were supposed to meet, Gamo 

was killed on his way to work. 

According to the police, two gunmen 

ambushed his vehicle as it 

took a turn at a junction in barangay 

Balagtas in the capital. The 

gunmen fired at least 16 shots, 

then entered the ombudsman’s 

vehicle and took his briefcase 

before speeding off on a motorcycle. 

“That briefcase was for 

me,” says Magsino-Lubis. 

In the days immediately following 

Gamo’s death, her sources 

among the capitol’s employees 

avoided her phone calls and 

stopped answering her text messages. 

She tried to visit Gamo’s 

office, but she could not even 

get close as employees, from a 

distance, shooed her away. “They 

were so scared,” Magsino-Lubis 

says, adding that she could hardly 

blame them. She herself does not 

pretend she isn’t afraid. “Tell me,” 

she says, “how you’d feel if you 

know you’re next.” 

Just a few months before 

Gamo’s death, Magsino-Lubis 

had been in pure wedded bliss. 

She and her husband, a businessman, 

were married only in 

October last year. She had taken 

a couple of months off before 

going back to work and discovered 

she had a flair for farming. 

She even began experimenting 

with organic methods, and took 

pride in the variety of herbs and 

flowers she was able to grow. 

But she remained foremost a 

journalist, and she was soon 

back dispatching stories about 

agriculture, the environment, 

crime, and other subjects. 

Her plan was, to her mind, 

very simple: farm in the mornings, 

do journalism in the afternoons, 

and come home in the 

evenings, to her husband and 

Mochtar, the boy they planned 

on having as soon as possible, 

a son they would name after the 

famous Indonesian journalist. “It 

was all going to be good and 

easy,” Magsino-Lubis says of the 

life she and her husband were 

preparing for. But those plans 

have had to be put on hold. 

SLAPPED WITH A 

LAWSUIT 

On July 5, Governor Sanchez 

filed an oral defamation case 

against Magsino-Lubis, a case the 

prosecutor elevated promptly 

to the Batangas Regional Trial 

Court. Sanchez accused her of 

being disrespectful to him during 

an interview at the capitol 

the day before. The mayors’ 

league also adopted a resolution 

declaring her persona non grata 

for the same reasons cited in the 

governor’s claim. 

Magsino-Lubis, however, 

says it was in fact the governor 

who had verbally abused her 

while she was trying to ask him 

about a computerization project 

the capitol would be undertaking. 

A few minutes into the interview, 

she says, she had already 

realized that Sanchez was very 

agitated. She was still taking 

notes when the cuss words began 

to rain on her head. “I lost 

count how many times he cursed 

me,” she says. 

Sanchez filed the oral defamation 

case on the same day her 

report about the computerization 

project came out in the Inquirer. 

The article, which Magsino-Lubis 

co-wrote with another reporter, 

discussed the P350-million 

project that will fully computerize 

Batangas’s real-property taxation 

system. The report raised questions 

about the conduct of the 

bidding process, and offered 

the theory—based on corporate 

and other documents—that the 

governor himself was the owner 

of the company that clinched 

Controversial governor. Armand 

Sanchez (second from left) has been 

linked to jueteng by his political 

opponents and by the Batangas clergy. 

the contract. Sanchez has since 

denied this. 

In hindsight, Magsino-Lubis 

notes that her fateful interview 

with the governor took place 

while Senate witnesses were 

pointing to Sanchez as among 

those who should be summoned 

to the hearings to explain their 

supposed involvement in jueteng 

operations. Magsino-Lubis herself 

had repeatedly reported on 

the governor’s alleged jueteng 

connection, but public interest 

in the issue and the personalities 

involved was particularly high 

while the congressional inquiry 

was going on. It was not surprising 

then, she says, that Sanchez 

had become increasingly edgy 

about reports on him and his 

work at the capitol. 

Still, Magsino-Lubis did not 

expect that the governor would 

file a case against her, or that 

the case would be brought immediately 

to court without any 

preliminary investigation. She 

was not even given a chance to 

file a counter-affidavit. Two days 

later, she received that dire call 

from one of her sources, who 

also informed her that she was 

to be finished off when she appeared 

before the court to post 

bail. “The case was meant to 

make me surface at a particular 

time and place so they could kill 

me,” says Magsino-Lubis. 

Her editors at the Inquirer 

have since provided her with 

legal assistance, and lawyers 

have filed for her a motion to 

dismiss Sanchez’s suit. 

PARANOIA AND 

DISTRUST 

As far as she can tell, the threat to 

her life is not the subject of any 

official police investigation. The 

governor himself, in a written reply 

to PCIJ’s queries, implies there is 

no reason for her to be on the run, 

since there is no one after her. A 

few of her colleagues in Batangas 

and Manila are also unsympathetic, 

although that seems more because 

Magsino-Lubis tends to come off as 

blowhard and rather self-righteous 

to some people. But Magsino-Lubis 

says that a day after she fled 

Batangas, she received another 

call from another source, who told 

her exactly what the first caller had 

said. She recalls telling her second 

informant, “If I had waited for your 

call, I’d be dead by now.” 


I REPORT 

21

She says she had no time to 

go to the local police to report 

the threat and have it put on the 

blotter. Besides, she says, she 

did not trust the Batangas police 

at the time. She has, however, 

managed to submit a letter about 

her situation to Task Force Gamo, 

which was formed to investigate 

the ombudsman’s death, as well 

as to Philippine National Police 

Director General Arturo Lomibao. 

She has been told by Task Force 

Gamo, however, that it lacks 

funds to include her case in its 

investigation. 

Months later, Magsino-Lubis 

has yet to get used to life on the 

run. Home for a week could be a 

posh condominium unit owned 

by a godparent. For the next, a 

studio leased by a friend, and 

the next, a musty room in a 

youth hostel. She had practically 

mapped out the rest of her life 

with her husband, and now she 

cannot make plans beyond a 

few days. She says the paranoia 

she is forced to have is torture, 

although the greatest casualty so 

far has been her ability to trust 

people. There was one time she 

was enjoying a garden show 

with one of her “foster mothers” 

when a woman recognized her 

and asked, “‘Di ba ikaw si Mei 

Magsino, taga-Inquirer (Aren’t 

you Mei Magsino, from the Inquirer)?” 

The very same day she 

left to find another temporary 

sanctuary. 

Another time she had engaged 

the security guard of the 

condominium where she was 

staying in a friendly chat. The 

guard mentioned a “governor” 

who was frequenting the building 

to visit a friend. Magsino-Lubis 

pressed the guard for more 

details, and was told it was a 

“Governor Sanchez.” Magsino- 

Lubis ran all the way to the unit 

she was occupying, grabbed 

her things, and was soon on 

the street looking for another 

place to stay. 

But even as she runs, she 

has not stopped doing her job. 

She has been able to file a few 

stories since leaving Batangas, 

doing research, speaking to 

sources by phone or meeting 

up with them. Once she has all 

her materials ready, she finds an 

Who is Armando Sanchez? 

B 

ATANGAS GOVERNOR 

Armando Sanchez 

says journalist Mei 

Magsino-Lubis is 

“lying through her 

teeth when she says she is in 

hiding.” He also says “the only 

time there were PNP personnel 

looking for her” was when she 

was still the subject of an arrest 

operation covered by “a valid arrest 

warrant” regarding the oral 

defamation case he had filed 

against the Inquirer correspondent. 

After she posted bail, the 

governor says in a written reply 

to questions sent to him by the 

PCIJ, “the operation to arrest 

her was stopped.” 

“We completely deny the 

canard that two prisoners from 

the Batangas Provincial Jail were 

deliberately let loose to kill Mei 

Magsino-Lubis,” he adds. “(We) 

challenge any and everyone 

to conduct unannounced head 

counts of the prisoners in the 

Provincial Jail.” 

Such a head count would 

have meant a lot during the 

time of Magsino-Lubis’s own 

“escape.” But now it would be 

futile, if citizens’ crime watchgroups 

are to be believed. Ellen 

Gran of the Crusade Against 

Violence, for instance, says prisoners 

who are let out of jail to 

commit crimes at the instigation 

of powerful people are usually 

let in again after the deed is 

done or the plot is uncovered. 

This gives the criminals the 

perfect alibi because it appears 

they had been in prison all the 

time. 

Governor Sanchez of course 

would probably rather that 

people count not the prisoners 

in the provincial jail, but his 

accomplishments as a public 

official, especially as mayor of 

Sto. Tomas town. This includes 

a three-story town hall that was 

built, according to official statements, 

with P22 million of his 

own personal 

funds. His stint 

as mayor also 

produced a 

28-bed hospital 

and garnered the 

municipality the 

top prize in a nationwide 

search 

for the cleanest 

and greenest 

town in 2002. It 

also led to the 

computerization 

of Sto. Tomas’s 

real property tax 

collection system, which, says 

Sanchez, resulted in a 300- 

percent increase in collection 

and enabled the municipality to 

make the huge leap from being 

fifth-class to first-class. He had 

wanted this computerization program 

to be replicated throughout 

the whole of Batangas, but his 

attempt to do so has somehow 

dragged him into controversy. 

Then again, there are other 

controversies that Sanchez has 

found himself in, foremost of 

which involves the nagging allegation 

that he is a jueteng lord. 

Journalists from the region have 

long referred to the alleged links 

of Sanchez to the illegal game. 

When he won the gubernatorial 

seat last year, among the 

first questions the local media 

there asked was on Sanchez’s 

supposed jueteng connections. 

He and his supporters 

have repeatedly denied this. In 

the local paper 

Batangan, one of 

his key campaign 

personnel and 

present provincial 

administrator, 

Ronnie Geron, 

was quoted as 

saying, “Arman is 

not into jueteng.” 

Geron, however, 

said that his boss 

was a partner in 

an “online sports 

betting” venture, 

although he also 

said Sanchez would soon divest 

himself of his interests in that 

business. 

In his reply to the PCIJ’s queries, 

Sanchez himself says, “We 

reiterate that we do not know 

anything about jueteng.” But 

he also says, “We have been 

very consistent in our stand for 

its legalization, from the time 

I became mayor, during the 

two terms that I served in Sto. 

Tomas and up to the time I was 

elected Governor. Now that it 

has stopped, we are hoping that 

the issue would be laid to rest.” 

For sure, Sanchez, who, 

based on his own assets statement, 

is worth at least P90 million, 

does not comport himself 

like a lord—not even a jueteng 

lord. This is even though he was, 

by many accounts, already rich 

by the time he entered politics 

and became mayor of Sto. 

Tomas in 1998. Educated as a 

mechanical engineer, Sanchez 

worked in Saudi Arabia in the 

1980s before coming back and 

reportedly starting several businesses, 

among them construction 

firms, a travel agency, and 

a security agency. But in the 

conjugal 2004 statement of assets 

and liabilities he filed with 

his wife Edna, at present the 

Sto. Tomas mayor, no business 

interests appear. 

Although wealthy, the portly 

governor prefers comfort to 

class. Those who know him well 

say that even while at work at 

the capitol, he likes to wear a 

kamiseta (sleeveless undershirt), 

a pair of loose shorts, 

and flipflops. Like many of his 

provincemates, he also tends to 

talk loudly, as if always gearing 

for a fight. 

Which is just as well. The 

national dailies say that in fact 

Sanchez is in a “brawl” with 

his own vice governor, who will 

not let go of the jueteng issue, 

aside from other things. In the 

prefatory statement in the graft 

case he filed before the Ombudsman 

in early September, 

Vice Governor Richard ‘Ricky’ 


J O U R N A L I S T A T R I S K 

Internet café where she writes 

her pieces and then submits 

them by email. She says she has 

not been back in Batangas since 

she left the province, contrary to 

claims by the governor that she 

has even been seen windowshopping 

there. 

Magsino-Lubis says she is 

tired, of course. She wants to 

be able to use her own name 

again whenever she checks into 

an inn, a hotel, a hostel. She 

longs to be able to walk the 

streets without having to wear a 

baseball cap. When she sits in a 

café, she wants to enjoy her cup 

of barako without having to keep 

looking at the door every time 

someone comes in. 

For now, however, it has to 

be this way if she wants to be 

able to go back alive to Batangas 

and her husband. After all, the 

subject of her investigations is no 

longer the college dean who told 

her—the editor-in-chief of the 

school paper—that she would 

not be allowed to graduate unless 

she donated a karaoke to the 

dean’s office. This time around, 

whether or not she is right about 

who wants her dead, there is 

no doubt that she is up against 

a far more powerful figure. But 

Magsino-Lubis says, “Politicians 

can only stay so long in office. 

I’ll be a journalist forever.” 

A JUETENG PAST 

It’s actually rather ironic that 

she came to writing exposés 

on jueteng, since her maternal 

grandfather was one of the game’s 

operators. She has vivid childhood 

memories of policemen knocking 

on their door at two in the 

morning to “collect.” She recalls, 

“My lolo would give P5,000. The 

police would leave with a goat in 

tow as well.” 

Her mother was an avid 

jueteng player, too, placing 

bets every morning. But that 

was then. Now Magsino-Lubis’s 

mother no longer plays the 

game, concentrating instead on 

running the family restaurant 

and pig farm. Magsino-Lubis 

says her parents and four siblings 

are among her sources of 

courage. She says, “My family 

has three words for me: ‘Kaya 

mo ‘yan (You can do it)’.” 

She is also reassured that her 

case is being watched closely 

by local organizations such as 

the CMFR and the Philippine 

Press Institute, as well as international 

groups like the CPJ 

and the International Freedom 

of Expression Exchange. She 

is hoping, she says, that letting 

more people know about the 

threats against her will lessen the 

chances of her being hurt. 

In addition, Magsino-Lubis is 

able to count on the support of the 

Church. Lipa Archbishop Ramon 

Arguelles had offered her refuge 

months ago, suggesting she go to 

the Canossa convent in Lipa. But 

Magsino-Lubis, while grateful for 

the gesture, did not want to be 

cloistered. “I wouldn’t be able to 

work there,” she says. The mere 

thought of being unable to practice 

her profession is a nightmare 

for her, since she says she has tons 

and tons to write about. 

And write she will, although 

she wishes that soon she will 

be able to do so back home in 

Batangas, in her farm, with her 

husband and the birds that greet 

them every morning. 

i 

Recto even says that Sanchez is 

“widely known” to be a jueteng 

lord not just in Batangas, “but 

nationwide.” According to Recto, 

Sto. Tomas has been known 

as the “center of (Sanchez’s) 

jueteng operations for the last 

20 years.” 

Earlier this year, Sanchez’s 

name had also surfaced in lists 

of government officials with alleged 

jueteng links. Drawn up by 

the Department of Justice and 

the People’s Crusade Against 

Jueteng, these lists were partly 

why Sanchez was summoned 

last June to the Senate hearings 

on jueteng. But Sanchez told 

the Senate that he would be in 

Japan on a business trip at the 

time and could not make it. He 

was not summoned again. 

Recto’s case against 

Sanchez, however, is not really 

about jueteng. Rather, it alleges 

that the governor “and his 15 

co-conspirators” are carrying out 

a P350-million real property tax 

computerization project under 

anomalous circumstances, rigging 

the bid and awarding the 

deal to a “dummy” corporation, 

the Automated Data Processing 

Technologies Inc. (ADPT), 

purportedly owned by Sanchez 

himself. 

The governor dismisses 

Recto’s findings of irregularities, 

saying they are “at best a 

flawed opinion.” Sanchez says 

all of capitol’s projects, including 

the computerization, have 

gone through all the procedures 

laid out in the law. He also says, 

“(The) final step mandated by 

the New Procurement Law is the 

Trouble in the capitol. Gov. 

Sanchez (front row, third from left) 

presides over the launching of his 

political coalition just outside the 

Batangas provincial capitol. 

review process now being done 

by the (Commission on Audit).” 

In earlier denials of wrongdoing 

published in local newspapers, 

capitol officials defending 

the contract said that all documents 

pertaining to the contract 

were immediately turned over to 

COA after the first payment was 

made. Sanchez now says, “We 

are asking everybody to simmer 

down a little bit and just wait for 

(COA’s) findings.” 

But Recto retorts that the 

documents given to COA had 

already been sanitized. “I think 

they pulled out the papers after 

Mei’s story and redid the whole 

thing,” Recto says, referring to 

Magsino-Lubis’s Inquirer report 

that questioned how ADPT could 

have won the contract when the 

company had not even been 

born yet at the time that the payment 

for it was obligated. 

Asked by Newsbreak in September 

about public perception 

that he was merely running after 

the governor’s seat, Recto told 

the magazine, “I’ve been through 

that.” He stressed, “If my allegations 

happen to be true, 

whatever my motivations are, 

please forgive me.” Later that 

month, when the suspension order 

for the governor that he was 

expecting did not come, Recto 

called for a press conference in 

Manila and repeated the claims 

he makes in his graft case. Lipa 

Archbishop Ramon Arguelles sat 

beside the vice governor and 

was later described by newspapers 

as having rebuked Sanchez 

for “graft and corruption, the 

atmosphere of fear, and the 

spread of vice” in the province. 

Sanchez has since told 

PCIJ that “if given a chance to 

meet and converse with (the 

Archbishop), I am certain that 

he would completely change his 

preconceived apprehensions 

about me.” 

Sanchez does have his own 

set of admirers, among them 

Batangan’s Sonny Atienza, who in 

a 2004 column praised the new 

governor for his “definite goals 

and objectives,” including a plan 

to rid the province of drug abuse. 

Atienza also cited Sanchez’s successful 

move to rid the bureaucracy 

of “nonperforming assets” 

and have capitol personnel 

practice strict observance of office 

hours. And, wrote Atienza, in 

just a matter of one or two days, 

Sanchez was even able to clear 

the roads leading to the capitol of 

parked jeepneys that had robbed 

other motorists and pedestrians 

of needed space. 

The governor, however, 

seems to have had a harder 

time fending off all sorts of 

allegations, such as cheating in 

the 2004 elections. In response 

to a protest lodged by losing 

candidate Rosario Apacible, 

who placed second in a field of 

seven, the Commission on Elections 

(Comelec) began a recount 

of the gubernatorial votes from 

some 2,000 precincts across 

the province. Apacible alleges 

that Sanchez’s winning margin 

of some 60,000 votes was 

merely the result of fraud, including 

the use of dagdag-bawas 

(vote-padding and –shaving). 

As of this writing, the Comelec 

has completed a recount of 

just some 600 precincts. The 

recount was suspended at the 

end of September after Comelec 

personnel discovered around 

90 empty ballot boxes from the 

municipality of Padre Garcia. 

– Vinia Datinguinoo 


I REPORT 

23

BATTLE OF THE 

BILLBOARDS 

CHARLENE DY 

THEY’RE BIG and 

bold, but Metro 

Manila’s billboards 

aren’t exactly beautiful, 

at least not to 

everyone. These 

days one billboard 

has caught the city’s attention, 

and few have had nice words for 

it just yet. One irate motorist even 

called up a radio station to ask, 

“Can I do anything about the fact 

that when you’re going south on 

Edsa on the Guadalupe Bridge, 

there’s a big moving screen, and 

it’s glaring, even distracting, and 

might cause traffic accidents?” 

The radio host’s reply: “Well, I 

think it’s owned by the city of 

Makati.” 

It turns out the electronic 

billboard in question is only a 

“joint venture” between the city 

of Makati and Dream Advertising, 

which owns it. Dream 

Advertising, with the help of 

Korean partners, brought LED 

(light emitting diode) technology 

recently to Manila. Since the 

billboard was put up this year, it 

has attracted controversy along 

with ad placements. Motorists 

have griped about its brightness, 

billboard suppliers complain 

that it blocks the advertisements 

behind it, environmentalists dislike 

that its foundation was built 

on a former public park. It also 

turns out that it went up after 

Makati’s local government had 

already issued a memorandum 

prohibiting any billboard permits 

to be granted until a new set of 

ordinances—the Makati City Billboard 

Masterplan—takes effect. 

Makati City Building Inspector 

Ruel Almazan says the plans for 

the billboard had been submitted 

before the memorandum was issued, 

which was why it was able 

to clinch a permit. He also says 

the billboard had been a donation 

to the city. Engineer Annabelle 

Maniego, meanwhile, says that 

there had been a special resolution 

granted for the LED, adding 

that the display is “supposed to be 

for Makati City programs.” 

On the same day that she 

says this, however, among the 

billboard’s 10- or 15- second 

spots is a commercial of a golden 

chicken patty plopping onto 

a lettuce-topped bun. It’s an ad 

for KFC, which doesn’t seem to 

have anything to do with Makati 

City programs. To Dream executives, 

there is no question that 

the billboard is commercial, but 

its association with Makati City 

has caused a great deal of confusion, 

both for commuters and, it 

seems, for city officials. 

In any case, the questions surrounding 

the electronic billboard 

make it an ideal poster child—or 

problem child—for the ongoing 

billboard debate, which is admittedly 

getting to be more one-sided 

as each day passes: just about everyone 

has something bad to say 

about them. Just about everyone, 

however, also believes there’s 

profit to be made (and being 

made) in those giant signs. 

Not that there’s anything bad 

about commerce per se. People 

like environmentalist Odette 

Alcantara, however, say that 

the resulting mushrooming of 

billboards is an ethical issue, in 

part because they mar the natural 

city skyline. Alcantara is the 

convener of the Anti-Billboard 

Coalition or ABC, a group of 

about 30 motorists, journalists, 

lawyers, greenies, and other 

concerned citizens. “I want to 

make it clear,” she announces. 

“I’m not against billboards. I’m 

against billboards in the wrong 

place. I’m anti-space abuse.” For 

Alcantara, the billboard boom 

infringes on public space: the 

open air, the landscape, things 

she feels belong to everyone, 

not just outdoor-media suppliers 

and advertising agencies. 

She also says, “They are traffic 

hazards. They supplant the road 

signs!” There are also issues 

regarding aesthetics, offensive 

content, and structural safety. 

These can be difficult to 

quantify. No studies have been 

conducted that show whether 

traffic accidents are caused by 

billboards, for instance, and offensiveness 

is subjective. While 

one viewer may see a billboard of 

a bare-chested hunk in low-riding 

denims as lascivious, another 

might consider it the highlight of 

her—or his—daily commute. 

In 2003, the Outdoor Advertising 

Association of the Philippines 

(OAAP) also commissioned a 

study that showed only three 

percent of media viewers in Metro 

Manila had totally “negative” responses 

to billboards. Alcantara, 

however, says numbers are irrelevant. 

“You don’t win (the debate) 

with statistics,” she says. “I want it 

discussed on a moral high ground. 

This is essentially a moral issue, 

an abuse of power.” 

MONEY MACHINES 

Again, for the cynical, all these 

can really be boiled down to that 

simple fact of life: money. Or as 

media consultant Lloyd Tronco 

puts it, the current billboard explosion 

has roots in changes in market 

demographics, improved technology, 

and competitive prices. 

Tronco points out that billboards 

can connect easily with 

target markets because “more 

people are mobile nowadays,” 

referring to the increasing 

number of commuters and 

more time spent outside of the 

house. There has also been the 

advent of digital printing, which 

has allowed billboards to be 

printed cheaply and quickly 

on tarpaulin, a resilient, element-friendly 

material. Lately, 

billboards have been getting 

pocket-friendly are as well. According 

to Carlo Llave, OAAP 

chairman and president of media 

supplier Fourth Dimension, they 

fetched P200 per square-foot 

in 1989, when they were first 


T H E M E T R O P O L I S 

introduced in the country. The 

peso was still something like 26 

to the U.S. dollar then. Today, 

tarpaulin billboards cost only 

P14 per square foot. 

In contrast, “rates are skyrocketing” 

for other media 

(radio, TV, print) advertising, 

says Joel Callao, president of 

outdoor-media supplier MediaPool. 

For instance, a 3,000- 

square-foot billboard on a major 

route like Edsa would cost about 

P200,000 per month. A full-color, 

full-page ad in a major daily 

newspaper would cost approximately 

P250,000 on a weekday, 

and P300,000 on weekends. A 

30-second primetime slot on a 

major local channel, meanwhile, 

would run about P180,000. 

Advertisers aren’t the only 

ones who profit from billboards’ 

affordable rates. Obviously so 

do media suppliers, who are 

the actual billboard builders and 

maintainers; numerous landowners 

also benefit from renting 

out their property. 

So money is really being made, 

lots of it in fact, although trying 

to keep track of just how much 

the outdoor-advertising industry 

is raking in can be thorny, since 

there is no system for measuring 

the budgets and revenues of those 

connected with it. But Callao 

suggests that if one assumes that 

the leading firms, such as United 

Neon, Carranz, and his own MediaPool, 

gross some P5 million 

each per month, the collective 

yearly revenues for the industry’s 

top ten earners could reach P600 

million a year. There are about 60 

other smaller billboard suppliers 

within the OAAP, many of whom 

earn approximately P2 million a 

month, and countless other media 

suppliers that aren’t affiliated 

with the association. Add all the 

numbers, and the total take of the 

industry could be more than P2 

billion a year. 

WIN-WIN IN MAKATI? 

If only money were everything. 

In the case of the electronic billboard, 

where a single ad account 

can mean revenues of as much as 

P445,000 a month, the company 

that constructed and maintains it 

says it has an everybody-wins arrangement 

with the city government. 

“It’s an information drive 

with the city of Makati,” says 

Dream Advertising managing 

director Tim Orbos. “We provide 

the infrastructure, operation, 

and expenses. We get the right 

to advertise and in return, we 

provide free advertisement for 

them.” That includes having the 

city’s website address printed 

underneath the billboard. 

Orbos says Makati’s information 

materials “are still raw,” but 

that eventually, 30 percent of 

the billboard’s content will be 

set aside for the city’s announcements. 

The rest would be purely 

commercial. Already, Dream has 

snagged an exclusive contract 

with broadcast big boy GMA-7, 

which is why the electronic billboard 

has lately been flashing ads 

for the network’s Koreanovela 

“Sassy Girl,” along with those for 

other shows. Orbos also hastens 

to add that the commercial spots 

may include “socially relevant 

messages” from the likes of the 

United Nations, which will enjoy 

discounted rates. 

The electronic billboard operates 

from six a.m. to midnight. 

Its viewing screen measures 

11.5 x 7 meters or 866.5 sq. ft, 

although its total size is about 

12.5 x 8.5 meters or 1,143.5 sq. 

ft. That makes it the largest fullcolor 

LED billboard in the Philippines, 

although there have been 

bigger traditional billboards. 

Recently its brightness has been 

toned down in response to motorists’ 

complaints. But neither 

Dream Advertising nor Makati 

City looks willing to reduce 

its size or relocate it, as other 

billboard suppliers are hoping 

would happen, since its strategic 

placement, has obscured the 

billboards behind it. That prime 

location, however, allow it to be 

viewed by “4.5 million eyeballs” 

a day, and that excludes the eyeballs 

of MRT commuters. 

QUESTIONS ABOUT 

SAFETY 

At least no one is hyperventilating 

yet about it being possibly 

unsafe, structurally speaking. In 

pre-tarpaulin days, when billboards 

were made out of painted 

galvanized sheets pieced together 

on wooden and metal frames, 

people harped about the tendency 

of such signs to topple over 

during an earthquake, or for a 

particularly nasty typhoon to tear 

the sheets off their frames and 

have them flying about, ready to 

scalp some hapless passerby. 

The tarpaulin billboard was 

supposed to be relatively free 

of similar worries. But then in 

mid-September, the edge of one 

such sign, located somewhere 

between the MRT Cubao and 

Kamuning stations, ripped and 

went unfixed by the media supplier 

Big Board, in violation of 

building code regulations. Three 

days after, strong winds tore the 

tarpaulin completely free from 

its frame and then carried it far 

enough to get snagged on the 

power cable of an oncoming 

train. As it dragged on the line, 

it caught fire, disrupting MRT 

operations for eight hours, or 

the equivalent of P4 million in 

lost revenues. Fortunately, no 

one was hurt, but there were a 

lot of frayed nerves among MRT 

officials and commuters alike. 

For legislators, structural safety 

is the most crucial billboard 

issue. Most billboard legislation 

is based on the National Building 

Code, whose guidelines are 

vague at best. In drafting Bill 1714 

or the Billboard Blight Act, Senator 

Miriam Defensor-Santiago 

tried to address this shortcoming 

as well as the fact that, at present, 

local governments rely too heavily 

on the outdoor-advertising 

industry to self-regulate. 

Defensor-Santiago’s bill offers 

specifications on distance from 

roadways, intersections, and traffic 

lights, number of billboards 

allowed within a given area, 

and restrictions on size (such 

as, “No billboard shall exceed 

300 square feet in total surface 

display area”), with the intent of 

maintaining safety. The bill also 

seeks to be applied to all streets, 

not just national roads, meaning 

it would supersede the authority 

of both the Department of Public 

Works and Highways (DPWH) 

and local governments. “What 

we’re doing here,” says Camille 

Sevilla, legislative staff officer 

for Defensor-Santiago, “is giving 

national standard that will make 

it mandatory for local public 

officials to follow. We’re setting 

standards for safety, structure.” 

Media consultant Tronco 

says some regulations the senator 

is asking for are “excessive” 

and “not feasible,” for example, 

billboard sizes that are too 

small, which might result more 

accidents due to motorists’ inability 

to read the print. The 

OAAP’s position paper on the 

bill is somewhat more diplomatic. 

While it takes issue with 

Santiago’s characterization of the 

billboard industry as a “blight,” 

it agreed with many of the proposal’s 

criticisms about current 

billboard legislation, adding that 

there was much “confusion as 

to which government agency” 

implements which laws. 

ILLICIT “MAGIC” 

Still, even MediaPool’s Callao 

says that the industry needs to be 

more rigorous in self-regulation. 

“Because of high consumerism in 

the Philippines,” he says, “we (the 

ad industry) tend to neglect our 

social responsibilities as long as it 

will favor ‘my brand’…We have to 

regulate ourselves, we have to not 

respond to competition. Some of 

our members, even if they know 

it’s illegal, they will still go for it 

(erecting billboards).” 

This is largely why, say other 

industry insiders who decline to 

be identified, a common practice 

nowadays is to post smaller 

billboards on street lamps and 

pedestrian overpasses, even 

though section 2001 of the National 

Building Code prohibits 

outdoor advertisement on “street 

furniture” on any national roads. 

The insiders add that personnel 

and officials of national government 

agencies and local governments 

often benefit financially 

from such legal indiscretions, to 

the tune of several hundred million 

pesos a year. (One DPWH 

architect refers to such arrangements 

as “hocus-pocus.”) 

Back at the Makati City Hall, 

a rummage through billboard 

records with Almazan, who is 

responsible for checking billboards 

for permits and is authorized 

to demolish those without 

proper paperwork, yields these 

statistics: of 149 billboards, 69 

have permits, 72 do not, and 

eight await verification. It’s clear 

laws are being ignored; since 

February 2004, Almazan has 

demolished 59 billboards. 

In the meantime, Dream 

Advertising is dreaming up more 

electronic billboards for Metro 

Manila. Orbos says the benefits 

of having such billboards 

include “real-time” value, since 

the displays can easily be altered 

to accommodate, say, urgent 

public announcements. He says 

his company is planning more 

joint ventures with other local 

governments. So far, five have 

shown interest. 

i 

Charlene Dy has worked in Hong 

Kong, New York, Massachusetts, 

and most recently in Shanghai, 

where she was a columnist, restaurant 

critic, and magazine 

editor. 


I REPORT 

25

W O M E N & D I S A S T E R 

TESS BACALLA 

BANDA ACEH, 

Indonesia 

RAHMI IS about 

14, but has 

already lost the 

world she knew. 

One can see it 

in her sad, soulful eyes, and in 

her inability to smile. And the 

reason is evident just by surveying 

what surrounds her here in this 

northwestern Sumatran city. Nearly 

a year after the powerful Dec. 26 

earthquake struck and triggered 

tsunamis in several parts of Asia, 

this once bustling coastal city 

remains desolate. In many areas, 

piles of rubble are the only proof 

that there were once houses and 

buildings there while in others, 

muddy boats scattered willy-nilly 

far from the shore show just how 

strong the waves that swept into 

Banda Aceh were. There are also 

places where the stench of death 

still hangs in the air, even as a few 

men sort through the debris. 

Save for a younger brother, 

Rahmi is all that is left of her 

family. She doesn’t know it yet, 

but Aceh’s female population 

in particular has been just as 

decimated. In fact, the tsunami 

didn’t just flatten this provincial 

capital and almost erased it 

from the map. It also altered the 

demographics of a place that 

was already a man’s world to 

begin with, and may have paved 

the way for a hard future for 

Rahmi, a life that will be more 

difficult than what her mother or 

grandmother had experienced. 

The total death toll from the 

tsunamis that swamped coastal 

communities in Indonesia, Sri 

Lanka, Burma, Thailand, India, and 

seven other countries was 220,000. 

Based on the Indonesia National 

Disaster Coordinating Board or 

NDCB, more than half of those 

deaths were from Aceh. Excluded 

in these figures, however, are the 

missing, which may be far more 

than the fatalities. 

In many areas, including 

Aceh, most of the missing or 

dead are women. In five villages 

in Aceh’s Lampu’uk subdistrict, 

the women’s group Flower 

Aceh says only 40 of the 750 

survivors from a population of 

5,500 are women. Other local 

nongovernmental organizations 

and international aid groups have 

found similar statistics in other 

tsunami-affected communities in 

the province. The international 

relief group Oxfam says that in 

four villages in Aceh Besar district, 

male survivors outnumber the 

females by a ratio of three to 

one. In four villages in North 

Aceh, the female death toll made 

up 70 percent of the fatalities. In 

Kuala Cangkoy, 80 percent of 

the dead were female. 

Not surprisingly, men 

outnumber the women in the 

camps and barracks set up for 

“internally displaced people” 

or IDPs. International and local 

NGOs, as well as U.N. agencies, 

worry that if what is happening in 

these camps and barracks is any 

indication, the Acehnese women 

and girls who survived the deadly 

waves should brace themselves 

for what can lie ahead. 

HEAVIER BURDENS, 

HEIGHTENED RISKS 

OF ABUSE 

As in other Asian societies, women 

are the traditional caregivers in 

Aceh, and perform the household 

chores. They still perform such 

tasks in the camps, but these days 

their burden has become heavier 

because of the sheer number 

of men and children they are 

expected to serve and look after. 

Before the tsunami, each Acehnese 

household could probably count 

on more than a pair of female 

hands to do the chores. Today 

not only is that no longer true, 

women and girls are expected 

to help men who are not their 

relatives, if only because Acehnese 

males are “embarrassed to be seen 

doing housework,” says Tesmiati 

Emsa, who heads a women’s 

NGO based here. Another relief 

worker says some widowers left 

with children to look after simply 

could not cope with the idea of 

becoming caregivers even to their 

own offspring that they readily 

gave these up to an orphanage. 

Meanwhile, NGOs and 

international aid agencies say 

many of the women have been 

subjected to sexual harassment 

and abuse, while some have 

found themselves becoming 

victims of physical violence 

wielded by bored or frustrated 

men. Erwin Setiawan of Flower 

Aceh says men are lashing out 

partly because of the stressful 

conditions in the barracks where 

there is a lack of privacy and 

where they are unable to practice 

their usual means of livelihood. 

But he offers no explanation why 

women, who are enduring the 

same conditions, are not reacting 

in the same way and instead are 

made to bear the brunt of the 

men’s pent-up emotions. 

In fact, life in the camps and 

the barracks is even more stressful 

for the women because, say 

several observers, their needs were 

not taken into consideration in 

designing these temporary shelters. 

For instance, there are no separate 

toilets for men and women. Many 

of the toilets have no roofs or are 

made from just plastic sheets or 

sacks, through which peepholes 

could easily be cut. 

“I heard a lot of cases of men 

peeping while women were taking 

a bath in their temporary shelters,” 

says MB Wijaksana, editor in 

chief of Journal Perempuan, a 

Jakarta-based women’s magazine. 

He says he tried to check with 

the police if they were aware of 

these cases, which he describes as 

forms of sexual harassment, and 

found that the authorities had 

somehow managed to escape 

hearing about them. 

Personal supplies such as 

underwear and sanitary napkins 

have also apparently been 

excluded from the list of basic 

needs provided in the shelters. 

The lack of supply of long-sleeved 

shirts and headscarves—essential 

to Acehnese women, who are 

predominantly Muslim like the 

majority of Indonesians—has 

remained unchecked. In a press 

statement, the U.N. Population 

Fund (UNFPA) observed that in 

the face of such unmet needs, 

“women and girls become reluctant 

to carry out public activities and 

even access basic needs and 

humanitarian assistance.” 

As if they didn’t have enough 

problems, the women in the 

shelters have also had to put 

up with the lack of clean water, 

which means they are usually 

forced to fetch some elsewhere 

and lug it back to their quarters. 

But according to UNFPA 

information officer in Indonesia 

Maria Hulupi, some barracks are 

in areas that make it dangerous 

for women to venture outside. 

As it is, the crowded, maledominated 

environment has 

meant that women and girls 

have had to put up with being 

constantly teased and stared at. 

FORCED MARRIAGES 

The setup of many of the shelters—with 

related men and women 

staying in the same tent or room 

together—has even lent itself to a 

RES 

AM 

Surviving the tsunami. Most of 

the victims of the tidal wave that 

killed tens of thousands in the 

Indonesian province of Aceh last 

December were women. 

26

ILIENCE 

ID RUIN

W O M E N & D I S A S T E R 

trend many of the female refugees 

do not welcome at all: forced 

marriages. Samsidar, who heads 

a subcommittee of the National 

Commission on Violence against 

Women, says young women are 

being pressured to marry males 

staying in the same tents or barracks. 

Such marriages have become 

“an informal rule,” she says. 

Journalist Wijaksana, for his part, 

says that the pressure to marry is 

greater on young single women 

because he says that in Aceh, virgins 

are preferred to widows, who 

tend to be looked down upon. 

“For men the loss of wife 

seems a simple thing,” he adds. 

Besides, says Wijaksana, the 

shari’ah law forbids women from 

remarrying within three months 

of the deaths of their spouses. 

Men can remarry any time. Nana 

of the Humanist Institute for 

Cooperation with Developing 

Countries (Hivos) cites the case 

of a man in Malaboh on the 

Sumatran coast who married his 

sister-in-law only a week after 

his wife disappeared as a result 

of the tsunami. He thought she 

was dead, says Nana. A month 

later, the wife resurfaced. 

Oxfam says that forced marriage 

has serious implications on 

the education, livelihood, and 

reproductive health especially of 

young women. “Surviving women 

may also be encouraged to have 

more children, with shorter intervals 

between them, to replace 

those lost by the community,” it 

also says. “Again, this has consequences 

for their reproductive 

health and their ability to earn an 

independent income.” 

Compared to the men, there 

are fewer Acehnese women who 

have had some education, since 

families give priority to sending 

the male children to school. This 

practice is rooted in the belief 

that the women’s best place is the 

home—even though they are not 

recognized as household heads. 

Hivos’s Nana says some of the 

women in the shelters who participate 

in cash-for-work activities 

have admitted to her that all they 

could do was cry when their husbands 

would not let them leave for 

work without first making sure that 

their homes were in order. Such 

was their fate, the women said. 

The harsh truth is that the 

social position of women in Aceh 

accounts for their disproportionate 

number of deaths, say local 

and international NGO workers. 

Because the tsunami smothered 

Double burden. Acehnese 

women take part in cash-forwork 

activities organized in 

the refugees camps, but they 

have to do the housework and 

take care of children as well. 

the province on a Sunday, most 

of the women and children were 

at home while many of the men 

were out—socializing, running errands, 

or fishing. Other men had 

also not returned home for quite 

some time because their jobs were 

elsewhere. Ironically, 70 percent 

of Aceh’s pre-tsunami population 

consisted of women, because men 

were either being killed or were 

fleeing the conflict between the 

Indonesian military and separatist 

Free Aceh Movement or GAM. 

But most Acehnese women, 

unlike the men, do not know 

how to climb trees or swim, say 

some observers. This made it 

difficult for them to escape the 

raging waters of December 26. 

Yet even those who did know 

how to climb trees or could swim 

perished in the end because they 

were either dragged down by 

the sheer weight of the children 

and other family members that 

they tried so hard to save—in 

keeping with their traditional role 

as caregivers—or succumbed 

eventually to fatigue. Observers 

theorize that the long, flowing 

clothing that cover their arms and 

legs restricted the movement of 

the Acehnese women, frustrating 

their escape from the tsunami. 

FINDING THEIR VOICE 

Aid worker Nana of Hivos fears 

that Aceh’s women survivors 

could only become a weaker 

force now that their numbers 

have been diminished greatly, 

while men could emerge more 

dominant. Before the tsunami, 

women were already reluctant 

to speak, especially in public 

gatherings. Even now, despite 

all the hardships they have had 

to endure in postdisaster Aceh, 

many women are hesitant to 

voice out their concerns. 

But gender and poverty expert 

Yulfita Rahardjo says Acehnese 

women can strengthen their 

position if only they could be 

made aware of their rights. She 

concedes, though, that men will 

have to be educated as well on 

gender issues. In a gender training 

she conducted a few months 

ago in Jakarta for the subdistrict 

heads and planners in Aceh, she 

says it was evident that the participants—mostly 

male—did not 

understand the concept of gender 

and even blamed the women if 

they were not being heard, saying 

the women refused to talk. 

Yet women in Aceh have not 

entirely kept mum about their 

needs and aspirations. Some, for 

example, have expressed their 

desire to go back to their homes 

and start a small-scale business so 

they could rebuild their lives. 

Nani Zulminarni, head of the 

women’s rights group Pekka, says 

the women in the districts where 

her organization operates were 

unanimous in saying that they 

did not want to be dependent on 

others. Alongside their yearning 

to work is their dream to have a 

house again, a symbol of dignity, 

especially for Acehnese women. 

“No one expressed desperation 

and hopelessness,” says Zulminarni, 

who notes that providing livelihood 

is a very good starting point for 

empowering women. She says the 

grassroots women’s groups Pekka 

has helped have gained so much 

respect that their members are now 

being invited to important community 

gatherings. Says Zulminarni: 

“It’s a good sign.” 

Sylvia Agustina, program officer 

of the U.N. Development Fund for 

Women (Unifem) says her vision 

for her fellow Acehnese women is 

not just for them to return to their 

“normal” lives. Agustina, who also 

lost a number of her loved ones to 

the tsunami, says, “I want them to 

have an option.” 

Research for this story was funded 

by a fellowship from the 

Southeast Asian Press Alliance 

(SEAPA). 

i 


Member: Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation (Deposits insured up to P250,000)

U.P. SOCIOLOGY 

professor Randy 

David rarely talks 

about his family 

in his popular 

column in the 

Philippine Daily 

Inquirer, but sometime last year, 

he wrote about his youngest 

daughter, Jika. By then already in 

her late 20s and enjoying a solid 

career at a famous transnational 

conglomerate, Jika had surprised 

her parents by announcing she 

was putting that part of her life 

on hold because she had applied 

to be part of the Jesuit Volunteers 

Philippines (JVP). Jika was sent to 

Palawan, where she taught math 

to elementary and high school 

girls enrolled in a distance education 

program. 

It was a pleased David who 

wrote about his daughter’s decision 

to volunteer. Other parents 

would probably have reacted 

differently, at the very least expressing 

puzzlement at why 

someone still young and who had 

everything going for her would 

suddenly up and leave to work 

somewhere for free (JVP provides 

modest living allowances). Yet 

here is this very pleasant fact: even 

in this increasingly consumerist 

and cynical society, thousands 

of youths are still volunteering, 

oftentimes while they are still in 

school, but sometimes even when 

they are already earning considerable 

sums, as Jika David was. 

This is evident enough in 

political rallies, where earnest 

young faces far outnumber those 

lined with age. But many more 

are toiling in relative obscurity, 

sometimes for just a couple of 

hours at a time in underserved 

communities in the city, others 

for months or even a year in a 

remote barangay. 

Volunteering has become so 

popular, there is now even a 

website called ivolunteer (http:// 

www.ivolunteer.ph) that “seeks 

to promote volunteerism for 

social development.” At last 

count, the site listed more than 

60 organizations, from Davao to 

Ilocos. Many more are out there, 

relatively unknown but engaging 

the youth in activities beyond the 

usual gimik or nights out with 

their katropa. 

Volunteerism or the giving 

of self for the good of others 

is actually a neat fit in a country 

where the individual is not 

recognized unless he or she is 

part of a group. It is also an easy 

dovetail to the traditional Filipino 

concept of bayanihan or of a 

community working together. “It 

is part of the Filipino value system, 

the motivating factor being 

the kaluluwa (soul) and budhi 

(conscience) , and that part of our 

Pagkataong Filipino (being Filipino) 

is pakikipag-kapwa (being 

good to others),” say academics 

VOLUNTEERS FOR THE 

ENVIRONMENT. Many 

young people are joining the 

innovative protest actions 

of Greenpeace, where they 

are initiated to volunteerism 

(this photo and below). 

A GIFT OF SELF 

Grace Aguiling Dalisay, Jay Yacat, 

and Atoy Navarro in the book 

Extending the Self: Volunteering 

as Pakikipag-kapwa. They argue 

that everything starts from the 

individual as part of a family. 

“Sambahayan is seen as the foundation 

of pamayanan, samahan, 

and sambayanan,” they say, 

emphasizing the importance of 

the family to the community and 

the country. 

Dalisay and company had actually 

done a study that looked into 

what made individual volunteers 

tick. Foremost among the motivations 

was the element of social 

compassion and its ingrained 

feel-good effect. Volunteers also 

talked about commitment to the 

cause, sense of satisfaction and 

achievement derived from continued 

service, sense of purpose 

and personal meaning, and faith. 

Ironically, it also turned out that 

the giving of self usually meant 

benefits such as self-discovery, 

self-enhancement, and the realization 

of one’s true worth. 

RANDY DAVID didn’t say what 

had prompted Jika to join the 

JVP, although he did remember 

asking her at one point if she 

was happy at work. He had been 

worried about her, since she 

seemed to be too preoccupied 

with her job and was putting in 

extra-long hours that had her going 

home very late at night. 

“My inquiry surprised her,” 

wrote David. “I realized I was 

talking to a member of a new 

generation of highly disciplined 

and driven young people who 

worked hard and partied hard.” 

“Frugal to a fault, she saved a big 

part of her earnings for graduate 

studies abroad as well as for a 

yearly vacation to some faraway 

place,” said Jika’s father. “She liked 

going out with friends on Friday 

and Saturday evenings. She was 

bourgeois in every way. Watching 

her steady transformation into a 

corporate yuppie, I once ironically 

remarked to my wife that perhaps 

we were going to have, at last, a 

real capitalist in the family. Now I 

know I was way off the mark.” 

It could very well be that the 

young David had been inspired 

by the example of her parents, 

who are both academics yet well 

known in the NGO community. 

But Jika’s father also recalled that 

she had always wanted to be a 

teacher, a dream derailed somewhat 

by her early success in the 

corporate world. Then again, she 

could have just decided simply to 

try helping bring change—even 

just by a little bit—in a country 

that has too long a list of woes. 

Her father also said nothing 

about what she had been involved 

in during college. But for sure, 

aside from her family, Jika’s alma 

mater, the University of the Philippines 

(UP), offered her more than 

enough examples of youths who 

were trying to make a difference 

in their own small way. The volunteer 

organization Ugnayan sa 

Pahinungod (literally Self-offering 

Network), for instance, has been 


Y O U T H V O L U N T E E R S 

attracting students since it was 

formed in UP in 1994. By the late 

1990s, it was sending more than 

1,000 volunteers a year in different 

parts of the country, and collaborating 

with the Department of 

Social Welfare and Development 

and the Department of Environment 

and Natural Resources, as 

well as organizations such as Red 

Cross, the Magsaysay Agutaya 

Foundation, and the UP-based 

Kontra-Gapi. 

Pahinungod used to get at 

least P1 million from congressional 

pork-barrel funds. But 

that stopped in 2001, and the 

organization has since managed 

to survive by having the participating 

colleges in the UP system 

look for their own funding. Today, 

Pahinungod has even more volunteers. 

In UP Manila alone, it has 

a pool of 2,000. 

Lilibeth ‘Lib’ Perez is one of 

Pahinungod’s newest recruits. 

Still in the early stages of training, 

she sets aside two to three hours 

a week for seminars and workshops. 

The 17-year-old social science 

student is currently learning 

to make cards, and is scheduled 

to share those skills later with 

Manila’s streetchildren. But what 

she is really looking forward to is 

the summer immersion program 

where she and other Pahinungod 

volunteers will live for a month in 

poor villages in Southern Luzon. 

Long after graduation, many 

UP alumni are still helping with 

Pahinungod projects. But students 

remain the lifeblood of the 

organization. If not for anything 

else, the idealism of youth fuels 

their enthusiasm. But Oscar Ferrer, 

pioneering coordinator of 

Pahinungod at the UP Diliman 

campus, also explains, “Most 

young people in school usually 

do not have that much commitment 

in the household. Save 

for the usual responsibilities of 

helping out in housework, most 

of them often find themselves 

with a lot of time to hang out, 

or to discern and examine their 

purpose in life and their future. 

Volunteer work allows them not 

only to bond with their peers, 

it also reinforces their sense of 

worth and self-respect and gives 

them deep regard for other 

people.” 

BECAUSE IT asks for at least 

a year of service from its volunteers, 

the Ateneo-based JVP 

attracts mostly new graduates 

who want to help others before 

focusing on their careers. Floyd 

‘Noy-Noy’ Tena was a 23-yearold 

Ateneo de Naga graduate 

when he was sent by the JVP 

to Compostela Valley in 2001 as 

a “senior coalition builder.” In 

lay terms, Tena was supposed 

to help residents and local officials 

work together to develop 

their areas. That could have 

been a formidable task even for 

the most seasoned community 

organizer, but Tena more than 

held up gracefully, and even 

took to sliding through muddy 

roads with much joy. 

Perhaps it helped that just 

several weeks after arriving in 

Compostela, it had dawned on 

Tena why he was there. In a 

letter excerpted at the ivolunteer 

website, he wrote, “When I entered 

the JVP, one of my reasons 

was service. That simple. But 

my everyday ‘journey’ here has 

deepened the meaning and my 

experience of that service—it is a 

mission. A mission to serve Him 

in any way possible. A mission 

that shows us that God can be 

found not only in church or in the 

oratory but also in every person 

we encounter each day. A mission 

to serve—service that comes 

from the giving of self, giving that 

comes from love that is lubos, 

buhos, ubos (the utmost).” 

Krishna Jennifer Sonza, better 

known as ‘Kang,’ was in the same 

JVP batch as Tena. Then a 20-yearold 

graduate of Ateneo de Davao, 

Sonza was assigned as a basic 

literacy facilitator to the lumad 

children of Bindum, Bukidnon 

where, the JVP said, there was no 

electricity but plenty of “natural 

water resources.” In her letters, 

Sonza’s excitement over being 

a Jesuit volunteer was palpable. 

But one particular letter had her 

confessing doubts. 

“Why am I here if they can’t 

seem to learn the lessons I am 

teaching them?” she wrote in 2001. 

“Why am I teaching these kids 

who seem to be so dense? Why? 

Why? I was asking myself what 

my purpose was in this area. Then 

I suddenly remembered I was 

inside my classroom and my students 

were all staring at me. And 

I mean staring as if to ask, now 

why is ate (older sister) seemingly 

out of sorts? Nahiya gyud ako (I 

felt so ashamed). I was looking 

for meaning, I was asking why, 

and the answer was right there 

in front of me. There were the 

kids reminding me that hey, we 

are the reason why you are here.” 

WITH THE sheer number of organizations 

involved in volunteer 

work and the variety of situations 

that need to be addressed, 

anyone who is willing to give up 

some time could probably find 

something that would suit his 

or her interest, skills, and schedule. 

Apart from campus-based 

groups, there are thousands more 

sponsored by local communities 

and church organizations, as well 

as by high-profile groups such 

as Greenpeace and Worldwide 

Fund for Nature. In the last two 

decades alone, organized volunteerism 

has gained strength, 

in part because of the advocacy 

of causes such as global poverty, 

hunger, and HIV/AIDS by 

international celebrities (think 

Bono and Bob Geldof), and also 

because of the increased—and 

Personal journey. For 

many young people, 

volunteering for social 

or civic work is part of 

a search for meaning. 

welcomed—participation of 

NGOs in development work 

across the country. Many of those 

who volunteer may also have 

found inspiration in EDSA 1 and 

2, which, despite all the flak they 

are now getting, did demonstrate 

just what could be accomplished 

if people banded together for a 

single cause. 

Yet while the urge to help 

someone in need is probably 

innate in everyone, volunteerism 

attracts certain personalities, and 

especially those who have a passion 

to serve people and have 

good interpersonal skills. But not 

only do many youths volunteer 

anyway, a significant number of 

them wind up having careers later 

in community service or in professions 

that emphasize service such 

as teaching and yes, journalism. 

The Jesuit volunteers call it being 

“ruined for life”—but in a good 

way, of course. 

Jika David may end up being 

“ruined for life,” too. Early this 

year, her father mentioned her 

again in his column, reporting 

that she was thinking of extending 

her stay in Palawan. Randy 

David wrote that he and his wife 

had been looking forward to seeing 

their daughter home again, 

and so he had tried to convince 

Jika that there were other ways 

of helping out the girls there in 

their studies. Besides, wasn’t she 

thinking of getting an MBA? 

But Jika had replied that her 

life “is going on here perfectly. 

It is the first time I have felt that 

I am doing something that has 

meaning not only for me but 

also for other people, like these 

girls who have not had the same 

chances in life.” 

Her father then recounted that 

when he and Jika’s mother had 

paid her a visit months before, 

the founder of the school where 

she was assigned had thanked 

them. Apparently, Jika and another 

female volunteer were not 

only teaching the girls Math and 

English, they were also providing 

their students with “alternative 

images of what they can be.” 

And so, wrote David, “my heart 

tells me she has chosen the right 

path. For all the dark thoughts we 

often harbor about our country,” 

said Jika David’s proud, proud 

father, “I truly think we are far 

from doomed as a nation. Our 

children give us hope.” 

i 

With reporting by Tess Raposas. 


I REPORT 

31

i 

> Pinoy Political Humor 

Master impersonator. In 

2004, Willie Nep did uncanny 

impressions of Ping Lacson (left), 

FPJ (standing, center), and Raul 

Roco (extreme right). Below, 

Tessie Tomas is best remembered 

for being “Meldita.” 

Impersonating 

Presiden 

ELVIRA MATA 

IT MIGHT have started when this president 

sang a folk song after what could 

only be assumed as great sex. Soon everyone 

was singing “Pamulinawen” off-key. 

Since then, presidential impersonators 

have outnumbered presidential wannabes. 

There’s always someone spoofing a 

president—dead or alive—on TV, during 

concerts, Halloween parties, and from time 

to time, at people power marches on Edsa. 

There are a few who stand out, who 

have endured a revolution or two and 

became icons. Willie Nepomuceno, Tessie 

Tomas, and Jon Santos have been around 

longer than some of the presidents and 

presidential wannabes (Cory, FVR, Erap, 

FPJ, GMA, Roco, Ping, Bro. Eddie, and Eddie 

Gil) they’ve emulated. 

Michael V’s GMA in the top-rated TV 

show “Bubble Gang” was more cartoon 

than impersonation. He wore a bad wig, 

buck teeth, a mole as big as a bug, and to 

approximate the president’s size, stayed 

close to the ground with legs bent. He was 

hilarious but the presidential task force on 

politically correct humor didn’t think so 

and it’s been a year since Bitoy morphed 

into Gloria. 

Rene Boy Facunla, the real person 

inside Ate Glow, is the youngest (he’s 24) 

and the latest to join this band of Excellencies. 

He was (and still is) a student at the 

University of the Philippines when he first 

slipped into GMA’s high-heeled pumps. 

This was in January 2001, a few days after 

Edsa 2, which ousted Erap and installed 

GMA as president. The remarkable thing 

about Ate Glow is he looks and sounds 

like GMA, even when he’s not performing. 

“But I’m taller,” he says. 

But then, so is almost everyone else. 

For this issue, we decided to do a 

forum of these five presidential impersonators—first 

as themselves and later, as their 

favorite presidents. 

Confused? So is the country. Deal with it. 


Close to tears. Rene 

Boy Facunla emotes 

as “Ate Glow,” who 

keeps her cellphone 

with her even in bed. 

ts 

PHOTO LILEN UY 

MAKEUP CATHY CANTADA 

HAIR JERRY JAVIER 

STYLIST GUADA REYES 

SPECIAL THANKS TO MANDY NAVASERO 


I REPORT 

33

Pinoy Political Humor 

Many faces. Michael V 

in real life is Beethoven 

Bunagan, but he has 

other lives as well. 

ON THE STREET, YOU ARE OFTEN 

MISTAKEN FOR… 

Willie Nepomuceno: Not too many 

people recognize me immediately but 

those who do, jokingly call me Mr. 

President, Dolphy, Erap or FPJ and years 

earlier, Makoy or His Eminence. 

Tessie Tomas: There was a time they called 

me Amanda Finida, Imelda, Barbara Tengco. 

Ngayon, they call me Teysi because of the 

impact of “Teysi ng Tahanan.” 

Jon Santos: Wala. When I’m not made 

up as any of my characters, I’m quite 

unrecognizable. A friend once told me, 

though, that if Leonardo DiCaprio and 

Reese Witherspoon had an ugly baby 

together, that would be me. That person 

is no longer my friend. 

Michael V: They look around for 

cameras checking if they’re on the TV 

show “Bitoy’s Funniest Videos.” Before 

they used to call me Bebang, a character 

I play, or Michael V. 

Rene Boy Facunla: Ate Glow. Maraming 

tao ang hindi natutuwa kay Gloria, pero 

sa akin natutuwa sila. Pinapaabot nila 

sa masayang salita ‘yung gusto nilang 

ipaabot sa kanya. For example, madalas 

ako tanungin, “O Ate Glow, kelan ka ba 

bababa sa puwesto? (Many people don’t 

appreciate Gloria, but they appreciate me. 

They tell me nicely what they want to tell 

her. For example, I’m often asked, “O Ate 

Glow, when are you resigning?)” 

WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE PRESIDENT? 

Willie: No one really. But since it has 

become some sort of social responsibility 

for me to do impressions of presidents, 

I have to know more about them. In 

the process, I found them to be quite 

interesting people—Erap, in particular. 

Tessie: Bill Clinton. Except for the Monica 

Lewinsky episode, he did a good job of 

running the country. He was sensible and 

he was well-liked. 

Jon: Violeta Paderon. She is the president 

of the Vilmanians of Lucena Fan Club— 

pero last term na niya. 

Michael V: Ferdinand Marcos. I’m going to 

get a lot of flak for my choice, but during 

his time, malinis ang Pilipinas, maayos (the 

Philippines was clean and orderly). I also 

supported Cory at Edsa, pero after that… 

Rene Boy: Siyempre si Gloria. Kasi 

binigyan niya ako ng trabaho (Gloria 

of course, because she gave me a job). 

Without her, I wouldn’t be in showbiz. 

WHAT IS YOUR RING TONE? 

Willie: “Toreador.” I’ve always enjoyed 

classical music and fancied conducting 

an invisible orchestra even in my youth. 

The opportunity came last year when I 

was invited to conduct the entire Manila 

Philharmonic Orchestra in a show at the 

Aliw Theater. The surprise of my life? The 

piece assigned to me was “ Toreador.” 

Tessie: “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.” 

> 

WILLIE NEPOMUCENO 

Willie Nepomuceno is 

best known for his impressions 

of two dead 

presidents—Ferdinand 

Marcos and Fernando 

Poe Jr. (he won di ba?), 

and a chief executive 

who’s alive but incarcerated—FPJ’s 

best friend, 

Joseph Estrada. 

Willie Nep gently objects 

to being called “impersonator,” 

preferring 

to call what he does as 

“impressions.” He says, “Impersonation 

is simply copying 

something. I’d like to think 

that I go beyond that. It’s like 

‘painting’ an impression of a 

scene, situation or character. 

What you see is not necessarily 

the person’s character per 

se, but my impression of that 

person’s character.” 

Willie has been doing 

impressions for more than 

30 years. As a young boy in 

the 1950s, he would imitate 

the Reycard Duet, Bobby 

Gonzales, and Sylvia la Torre 

to amuse his classmates in 

Marikina. 

He was a fine arts student 

at the University of the Philippines 

when he started doing 

his Marcos impressions. An 

activist, he would entertain 

the crowd before the speeches 

against the usual fascists. 

Later, he was hired as 

a broadcaster for ABS- 

CBN’s “Radyo Patrol,” 

and was subsequently 

cast as part of the 

original “Super Laff-In.” 

In one of his many interviews, 

Willie described his first 

break in showbiz: “I had a hard 

time because the criteria were 

different: You had to be tall 

and good-looking; talent was 

not necessary. My strategy 

to break into showbiz was to 

imitate the famous—now I’m 

stuck in it. I can’t sing in my 

own voice, I have to sing in 

other people’s voices.” 

His last solo show 

was “Willie Nep for President” 

in 2004 where he 

impersonated most of the 

candidates as well as other 

characters. Last June, he 

did “Hello Garci” during the 

Kapihan sa Manila’s 20 th 

anniversary show. 

A few days after his interview 

with i-report, he flew 

to the United States to check 

up on Garci’s new look and 

to research on compatriot 

Leandro Aragoncillo, the first 

White House spy. 

Nah. He’s there to 

do shows and for some 

R & R. 

34 PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM 

I REPORT

The real thing. 

Jon Santos does a 

thumbs up with the 

real Steady Eddie. 

Frustration ko maging ballet dancer. 

Jon: My beeper doesn’t have one. Pero 

i-che-check ko sa Greenhills kung puedeng 

magpa-install. Aba, mahirap nang mahuli 

sa technology. (But I’m going to check in 

Greenhills if it can be installed. Why, you 

have to keep up with technology.) 

Michael V: The tunes in the video games 

“Need for Speed Underground” and “Fight 

Night.” May ring tone din ako na boses 

ng anak ko (I have a ring tone that’s my 

child’s voice). 

Rene Boy: Naka silent lagi ang cellphone 

ko kaya matagal ako sumagot ng text (My 

cell phone’s always on silent mode, that’s 

why I’m slow at answering text messages). 

WHAT CELLPHONE DO YOU OWN? 

Willie: Nokia. 

Tessie: Ano ba ‘tong nakasulat? “Samsung 

Exciting.” I changed my phone two 

years ago. My last phone was a 3210 and 

everyone was laughing at me. Bakit ka 

TESSIE TOMAS 

If Willie Nep is the king of 

presidential impersonators, 

Tessie Tomas is First 

Lady. From the late 1980s 

to the early ‘90s, Tessie 

didn’t just give an excellent 

impersonation of Imelda 

Marcos, she made Meldita 

her own. She was so convincing, 

she was cast as 

Imelda in the TV movie, 

“A Dangerous Life,” which 

was shown in the United 

States in 1988. 

The daughter of radio 

legend Laura Hermosa, Tessie 

started in radio when 

she was nine years old. She 

worked in advertising for 10 

years before she got her first 

break in showbiz as Amanda 

Finida, a spoof of weatherman 

Amado Pineda, in the TV gag 

show “Champoy.” She also 

popularized Barbara Tengco, 

socialite wife of a corrupt 

congressman in the TV sitcom 

“Abangan ang Susunod na 

pa naka 3210? But it works! Baduy ako sa 

telefono. I’m always the last one to change 

phones. I have a new phone but it’s still in 

the box. I’m so proud to be low-tech. 

Jon: Only the latest state-of-the-art beeper 

for me. Easycall, but of course! Ako pa. 

Michael V: Sony Ericsson P910i. It’s a 

fun phone and it does everything—word 

processing, voice recording, it has a 

camera, a music player, I can make 

sketches and save them as files. And 

when I dress it up, lagyan ng wig, ngipin 

at ilong (put on it a wig, teeth, and a 

nose), it can do impersonations. I also 

have a Nokia 6630 quad band phone. It’s 

handy when you’re always traveling. You 

can use it in Japan, Europe, and the U.S. 

Rene Boy: Nokia 6600. It was given to me 

by Globe president and CEO Gerry Ablaza. 

NORANIAN OR VILMANIAN? 

Willie: I became a Nora fan in the 

early ‘70s. In fact, when I was a virtual 

Kabanata.” She followed that 

up with a daily morning show 

a la “Oprah” called “Teysi ng 

Tahanan,” making her the 

queen of daytime talk shows 

for six years. 

Tessie is acknowledged 

as the pioneer in stand-up 

comedy, paving the way for 

comics like Candy Pangilinan, 

Allan K, and Tessie’s protégé 

Jon Santos. Today she stars in 

the top-rated sitcom, “Bahay 

Mo Ba ‘To,” on GMA-7 and 

hosts a new show, “Pusong 

Wagi,” on Channel 11. 

unknown in showbiz, I did an oil portrait 

depicting her as a grand old lady and my 

dedication read, “Fifty years from now 

and you’ll still be a Superstar!” I’m more 

or less 15 years closer to my prediction. 

I wonder if she kept that painting? In the 

late ‘80s, however, I was charmed by the 

sophisticated personality of Vilma. 

Tessie: Nora, I admire as an actress. 

Vilma, I admire as an actress and a friend. 

Jon: Guess. 

Michael V: The V in Michael is for … 

Rene Boy: Nora. Kasi she won all the 

major acting awards. She’s also been 

through a lot. 

Just for fun, we asked our impressionists 

extraordinaire to assume the personality 

of their favorite president (or First Lady) 

and answer a few questions. Everyone 

thought it was an easy enough request 

except for Jon Santos who was faced with 

a quandary, or should we say, quandaries? 

She is also involved in 

civic work, helping her lessfor 

tunate town mates in 

Catbalogan, Samar, with 

education scholarships. 

In addition, 

she is the 

PRO for Community 

and Family 

Services International 

(CFSI), an 

NGO that helps 

women and children 

displaced 

by the war in 

Mindanao. 

Her favorite impersonation 

is that of Mrs. Pullin, 

devoted wife to Roger 

Pullin, a marine-biologistcum-jazz-musician. 

TT describes their 

relationship: “He’s 

a ver y Brit husband, 

coping with 

a wacky wife who’s 

moody but very loving, 

charming, and 

whom he can ask 

to make coffee and 

look after him when 

he’s sick.” 

< 


I REPORT 

35

i 


Double trouble. Willie 

Nep is hilarious as FPJ’s 

double, while Tessie 

Tomas’s Meldita is the 

caricature of a caricature. 

> 

He wanted to do all presidents. 

He explained, “It’s so difficult to 

choose. Love ko silang lahat—Tita Koree, 

Heneral Eddie, Syerrap, and Tita Glorring. 

It’s like asking me to choose my 

favorite child. They are all so fascinating 

and colorful. Literally. Kasi may Mellow 

Yellow (Koree), Kleen and Green (Eddie), 

at may dalawang Pretty Im-peach 

(Syerrap and Glorring). I guess depending 

on the topic, iba-iba sa kanila ang 

pumo-possess sa akin.” 

Since he put it that way—Jon, be 

yourselves. As for the rest of the 

presidential posse, the following is their 

impression of the state of the nation. 

WHAT ARE THE TOP THREE PROB- 

LEMS OF THE COUNTRY? 

Willie channeling Erap: The top three 

problems of the country are breakfast, 

lunch, and dinner. There’s not enough 

food at the Filipino family’s table from 

sun up to sundown. They deserve a 

decent meal even on a small budget. I 

propose a linkage with the food chains 

to provide Pinoys with value meals— 

may softdrinks na, may French fries pa! 

Tessie internalizing Meldita: (Sings) 

Don’t cry for me Argentina... Top three 

problems? National amnesia. Yung may 

kasalanan today, bukas nakalimutan at 

JON SANTOS 

Jon Santos has two new 

preoccupations: getting 

to know Okrah, a new 

character he’s developing 

based on talk show 

queen Oprah Winfrey, 

and the search for the 

perfect murse. 

A murse, as defi ned 

by urbandictionary.com, 

is a male nurse. It is 

also a man’s purse, of 

which Jon has six. But 

he’s still looking. 

In the age of the cellphone, 

the PDA, the car’s 

locking/alarm/ignition system 

remote, and lest we 

forget the iPod, real men 

carry murses. 

Jon shows off his recent 

purchase from New 

York: a murse in off-white, 

shiny faux leather, which 

looks like a cross between 

a man’s clutch bag and a 

napatawad na natin. (Someone may be 

found guilty today, but by tomorrow, 

that’s already forgotten and forgiven.) 

Jon possessed by Syerrap: Puede bang 

top 3,000 problems? Actually, isa lang ang 

solusyon sa lahat ng iyan. Awatin natin 

ang pagtaas ng oil. ‘Yun lang. Delikado 

‘yan pag tumaas. Susunod kasi sa pagtaas 

ng presyo ng oil, ang pagtaas ng presyo ng 

powder at lotion. (Actually, there is only 

one solution. Stop oil prices from going 

up. It’s dangerous when oil prices rise. 

After that will come increases in the prices 

of powder and lotion.) 

Michael V spoofing GMA: Ang pagtutuligsa 

sa aking pagkapresidente, ang 

pagtutuligsa sa aking asawa, at ang 

pagtutuligsa sa aking anak. Naapektuhan 

lahat dahil dito. Dapat isinasantabi muna 

‘yan at mag-boxing muna tayo. Pag may 

boxing, nagkakaisa ang madlang Pilipino. 

Wala silang iniintindi. Nakakalimutan 

ang problema. Lahat sila nasa likod ni 

Manny Pacquiao. (The finding of fault in 

my presidency, in my husband, in my son. 

Everything is affected because of these. 

These should all be set aside while we 

box. When there’s boxing, the Filipinos 

become one. They are oblivious to 

everything else, they forget their problems, 

they are all behind Manny Pacquiao) 

Go, Manny, go! 

lady’s shoulder bag. 

He just got home from a 

successful U.S. tour of “In 

Kilitikal Condition,” a show 

he did with Nanette Inventor 

and Leo Martinez, and 

directed by Freddie Santos. 

They are currently working 

on Manila shows scheduled 

at the end of the year, and 

dreaming of a London and 

European tour, hopefully to 

start early next year. 

He talks a little about 

the show: “It’s meant for the 

Rene Boy being Ate Glow: Traffic, drugs 

at kulang sa bigas. Kulang tayo sa 

nutrisyon. Siguro kailangan mamahagi 

ulit ng nutribuns. (Traffic, drugs, and rice 

shortage. We lack nutrition. Maybe 

nutribuns should be distributed again.) 

WHAT IS YOUR MOST PRESIDENTIAL 

MOMENT? 

Willie as Erap: Swearing in as President at 

the historic Barasoain Church in Bulacan. 

Tessie as Meldita: Noong pinagawa ko 

ang Cultural Center of the Philippines— 

kese hodang libagin na ngayon ‘yan, may 

daga sa kisame, binabaha ang banyo at 

hindi gumagana ang flush. Noong 

panahon ko, si George Hamilton at Van 

Cliburn ang pumapanhik diyan. World 

class ang CCP. Ngayon, maski sino 

puedeng mag-concert. Ngayon, maitim na 

maitim na ang CCP. Puede ba maski 

kalburo, i-repaint n’yo? (When I had the 

Cultural Center of the Philippines constructed—who 

cares if it’s now grimy, 

there are mice in the ceiling, the toilets 

flood, and the flush doesn’t work. During 

my time, the likes of George Hamilton 

and Van Cliburn graced that building. It 

was world class. Now practically everyone 

can have a concert there. It’s now so 

dirty. Can someone try to at least whitewash 

it?) 

homesick Pinoys abroad. 

The setup is that there are 

secret agents on a mission 

to work on our country’s image. 

Armida Siguion-Reyna 

(Jon) has proposed the revival 

of real Filipino 

music. Doña Buding 

(Nanette) gives 

her own take on 

what the country’s 

problems are. Sen. 

Manhik Manaog (Martinez) 

has his own 

platform. Ate Vi 

(Jon) wants showbiz to go 

global…” 

Oh. 

Jon is set to do a 

show with John Lapus 

titled “Ang Ganda,” produced 

by Pops Fernandez. 

If there are no 

hitches—like an impeachment 

or a 

coup—it will run 

all weekends 

i n N o v e m - 

ber, he 

says. 


I REPORT

All my presidents. Erap 

(center) is Willie Nep’s favorite 

president, but then he likes 

Ramos (left) and Marcos 

(right), too. 

Jon as Tita Glorring: Siyempre when I 

returned to the Palace, no longer as a 

presidential daughter, but as president na. 

I went straight to my former bedroom. 

Hindi nagbago! (Nothing changed!) There 

they were—the same bed, the same table 

and the same chair I used as a little girl! 

Kasya pa rin ako. Hindi din pala nagbago 

ang aking height. (I could still fit. My 

height also didn’t change.) 

Michael V as GMA: Noong pinagsisipa ng 

mga tao si Erap at ako na ang pinroklamang 

presidente. Ngayon hindi na ako 

natutuwa sa mga tao kasi parang gusto 

nilang ulitin sa akin ‘yung ginawa nila 

kay Erap. (When people kicked Erap 

around and I was proclaimed president. But 

now the people don’t amuse me because it 

looks like they want to repeat what they did 

to Erap, but this time with me.) 

Rene Boy as Ate Glow: When Erap was 

ousted at ako ang nanumpa sa Edsa. 

WHAT IS YOUR LEAST PRESIDENTIAL 

MOMENT? 

Willie as Erap: Taking a boat ride as an 

exile out of the historic Malacañang Palace 

like a Katrina refugee by the Pasig River. 

Tessie as Meldita: Aba noong pinalayas 

ninyo kami. Mga walanghiya! Akala ko 

Paoay! Bakit kami napunta sa Hawaii! 

Puro pinya ang kinain ko doon. Sumakit 

MICHAEL V 

H i s r e a l n a m e i s 

Beethoven Bunagan or 

Bitoy. No kidding. 

S o w h e r e d i d 

Michael V come from? 

In an interview with the 

late Inday Badiday, he 

said it was a combo 

of the names Michael 

Jackson and Gary Valenciano. 

In an interview 

with Ricky Lo this October, 

Bitoy said V stood 

for Del Valle, his mother’s 

maiden name. 

When Michael V started 

in showbiz, he wanted to become 

a rapper like Francis 

M and Andrew E. He won a 

rap contest in “Eat Bulaga,” 

and then recorded a rap hit, 

“Maganda ang Piliin Mo,” 

his answer to Andrew E’s 

“Humanap Ka ng Pangit.” 

He discovered his talent 

for doing impersonations in 

ang tiyan ko. At wala ng keh-viar at 

imforted cheeseses (Why, when you 

kicked us out. You shameless fiends! I 

thought it was Paoay? Why were we sent 

to Hawaii? All I ate there were pineapples. 

My stomach ached all the time. And there 

were no keh-viar and imforted cheeseses.) 

Jon as Tita Glorring: I requested for a 

presidential vehicle. May nag-suggest ba 

naman that I send for a Little Tikes car!? 

Michael V as GMA: Basta negativo ay 

nakaka-apekto sa aking buhay (Anything 

negative affects my life). 

Rene Boy as Ate Glow: When Mike and I 

were in Boracay, nag-try kami mag-surf at 

ako’y nahulog (we tried surfing and I fell). 

HAVE YOU EVER TOLD A LIE? 

Willie as Erap: Never! 

Tessie as Meldita: Bakit, ano ba ‘yung 

lie? I lie down. I lie on the beach. But I 

never tell a lie. 

Jon as Heneral Eddie: I think Sen. Meeeriam 

Defenseeeve should answer that question… 

Hindi ba, sabi niya, “I lied, hahahaha!”? 

Michael V as GMA: I… am...sorry. 

Rene Boy as Ate Glow: Sabi nga ni Kris, “I 

may be many things but I am not a liar.” 

TELL US THE REAL STORY BEHIND THE 

HELLO GARCI TAPES. IS IT TRUE THEY 

WERE JUST RECORDED CONVERSATIONS 

the now-defunct “Tropang 

Trumpo” on ABC-5. He 

made the characters Junnie 

Lee, Betong, Etoy, and 

Bebang household favorites 

in the longest-running gag 

show (10 years and counting) 

“Bubble Gang” on 

GMA-7. 

Michael V is also known 

as the Master of Disguise 

and for the tagline “Yari ka!” 

which he uses in his top-rated 

program, “Bitoy’s Funniest 

Videos,” also on GMA-7. 

BETWEEN WILLIE NEP AND ATE GLOW? 

Willie as Willie: Naku ah! 

Tessie as Meldita: Kayo naman, bakit 

nga ba missing in action? De may 

tinatago! For all you know, nagpa-sex 

change na si Garci at hindi n’yo na 

makikilala. Pagdating niya dito, rarampa 

na lang ‘yan sa Library. At iba na ang 

tawag sa kanya: Gracia. (Why else 

would he be missing in action? Because 

he has something to hide! For all you 

know, he already had a sex change and 

he’s now unrecognizable. When he 

returns, he will sashay into the Library. 

And he will be called: Gracia.) 

Jon as Tita Glorring: Next question please. 

Michael V as GMA: Nagkamali sila. Ang 

sabi ko, Hello Kitty! (They made a 

mistake. What I said was, “Hello, Kitty!”) 

Rene Boy as Ate Glow: I was just inquiring 

about my pasa load tapos kung anu-ano 

na ang lumabas na istorya (and then all 

kinds of stories started coming out). 

WHOM DO YOU ADMIRE MOST—LIVING 

OR DEAD? 

Willie as Erap: FPJ living and FPJ dead. 

Tessie as Meldita: Sarah Geronimo. Kasi 

ang ganda ng boses. I wish I had her 

youth. Gusto kong maging bata ulit. I’m so 

jealous of her. I miss my youth. I really do. 

Kung young ako, nasa “ASAP” ako— 

When he’s not brainstorming 

for his TV shows 

and taping episodes (usually 

in disguise), 

he 

takes care 

of youngest 

son Migo, 

drives his 

kids Yanni 

and Milo to 

school, his 

wife Carol to 

the grocery, 

and takes 

pictures of strange signs 

with his hi-tech cellphone. 

One of his most recent 

snaps, taken 

at the 

e n t r a n c e 

of a toilet: 

“ B a r a d o 

—no tae, 

ihe puede 

(Clogged— 

no dumpi 

n g , b u t 

pissing allowed).” 

< 


I REPORT 

37


ikumakanta at sumasayaw. (If I were young, 

I’d be on “ASAP”—singing and dancing.) 

Jon as Tita Korree: My husband. A real 

hero. Sa katunayan, nasa pera siya. (In 

fact, he is on money.) 

Jon as Heneral Eddie: Buti pa si Tita 

Koree, ‘yung asawa niya nasa pera. Ako 

‘yung pera ko, nasa asawa. (Tita Koree is 

better off, her spouse is on money. Me, 

my money is with my spouse.) 

Michael V as GMA: I admire the dead 

because they don’t talk. Hindi na sila 

makakasimbulat ng mga sikretong dapat 

kalimutan. (They don’t reveal secrets that 

are best forgotten.) 

Rene Boy as Ate Glow: I admire…’yung 

dead. 

WHAT IS YOUR GREATEST FEAR? 

Willie as Erap: To be caught lying. 

Tessie as Meldita: Yung magka-wrinkles 

na ako. Kasi hanggang ngayon batak na 

batak pa ang mukha ko. (Because up to 

now, my face has none.) Made in Switzerland. 

At kahit ang laki-laki ng wasitline 

ko, Balenciaga pa rin ang suot ko. (And 

however large my waistline gets, I still 

wear Balenciaga.) 

Jon as Syerrap: Envelopes. 

Jon as Tita Glorring: Tapes. 

Michael V as GMA: ‘Yung mga buhay ang 

nakakatakot kasi puede ka nilang patayin 

(The living are scary because they can kill 

you). 

Rene Boy as Ate Glow: ‘Yung hindi 

tumangkad (Not to grow tall). 

IF YOU COULD CHANGE ONE THING 

ABOUT YOURSELF WHAT WOULD IT BE? 

Willie as Erap: I guess I’ve learned my 

lesson while incarcerated. I now read the 

Bible and if there’s one thing I’d like to 

change about myself, it’s my gambling 

habit. I used to play truth or consequence 

with my grandchildren. I would always 

bet on the consequence. Now I know 

better. Now I bet on the truth, because I 

know the truth shall set me free. 

Tessie as Meldita: Gusto kong palitan 

ang apelyido ko. Gusto kong bumalik sa 

Romualdez. Kasi mas class ‘yun. (I want to 

change my last name. I want to go back to 

Romualdez) Romualdez is Spanish. Marcos 

is Ilocano. Kinakain namin cocido, paella, 

mga Marcoses kinakain saluyot at pakbeht. 

(We eat cocido, paella, the Marcoses 

eat lowly vegetables.) 

Jon as Tita Koree: Ayoko na ng signature 

color ko na yellow. For a change, try ko 

naman ang light yellow, or better yet, 

dark yellow, canary, butter or lemon 

yellow. Kung ayaw n’yo lahat ‘yan eh di 

off-yellow or yellowish. 

Jon as Tita Glorring: I want to change my 

husband. 

Jon as Eddie: I want to change from ex- 

President to Prime Minister. Hehe. 

Jon as Syerrap: Gusto ko mag-comeback a 

la Arnold Schwarzenegger. Leader siya, not 

only of California but of Planet Hollywood. 

Michael V as GMA: The position of my 

mole. Mas maganda siguro kung nasa 

gitna ng aking noo. Dahil pag nasa gilid, 

tumatagilid ang tingin ng mga tao. 

Nagiging leftist sila. Minsan kumakanan. 

Maganda kung nasa center—nagkakaisa. 

(It would be nicer if it were in the middle 

of my forehead. When it’s on one side, 

people don’t look at you straight. They 

become leftist, sometimes they go right. It 

would be better at the center—so everyone 

would be unified.) 

Rene Boy as Ate Glow: My teeth. So I’d 

look more sincere when I smile. 

HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO DIE? 

Willie as Erap: I’d like to die a Filipino. 

Because the Filipino is worth dying for! 

Tessie as Meldita: I do not want to die. I 

want to live forever! Pero ‘pag ako 

namatay, ang rebulto ko nakatayo. Ilagay 

n’yo ako sa gitna ng Tacloban. (But if I 

die, my statue will be standing up. Put me 

in the middle of Tacloban.) 

Jon as all four presidents: Next question 

please. 

Michael V as GMA: Hindi ko iniisip ‘yan. 

Ang iniisip ko ay kabuhayan para sa ating 

sambayanang Pilipino. (I don’t think of that. 

I think about livelihoods for our countrymen.) 

Rene Boy as Ate Glow: With my partner 

after sex. 

WHAT IS YOUR LEGACY TO THE FILIPINO 

PEOPLE? 

Willie as Erap: I’d like to believe that I am 

the only President who has touched every 

Filipino’s heart in good and bad times. I 

was able to bring to each household the 

gift of happiness despite desperate economic 

conditions and a lot of laughter 

amidst embarrassing scandals and controversies. 

That is my legacy—the Erap jokes! 

Tessie as Meldita: Siyempre ang aking 

beauty. Meron pa bang gaganda sa akin 

bilang First Lady? (Is there any other First 

Lady more beautiful than me?) Excuse me. 

At ang aking mga edifices-ces-ces-ces. 

Lahat ng mga center d’yan—akin ‘yan. 

‘Yung lung center—akin ‘yan, cultural 

center—akin ‘yan, heart center—akin 

‘yan, puericulture center —akin ‘yan. 

Jon as Heneral Eddie: I changed our 

country’s image from “Sick Man of Asia” to 

“Emerging Tiger.” Nariyan ang successful 

APEC conference and Centennial Celebration. 

Most importantly, napapunta ko si Thalia 

a.k.a. Marimar sa Pilipinas (I was able to have 

Thalia, a.k.a. Marimar visit the Philippines). 

Jon as Tita Koree: Of course, aside from 

the return of democracy, I contributed 

some improvements in infrastructures by 

way of flyovers, which helped in our election 

process kasi nadidikitan sila ng posters 

tuwing election (because posters can 

be pasted on them during election). Lastly, 

my daughter Krissie. 

Michael V as GMA: Ang height ko. Sabi ko 

sa kanilang lahat, ang small ay talagang 

terrible. Akala nila ako’y basta-basta. 

Eh hindi pala. Mas malaki pala akong 

pumuwing sa kanila. (My height. I’ve told 

everyone that small is really terrible. They 

thought I could be pushed around, but 

they were wrong. I’m better at kicking 

sand in their faces.) 

Rene Boy as Ate Glow: My mole. 

i 

> 

RENE BOY FACUNLA 

Rene Boy Facunla says 

his uncanny resemblance 

to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo 

—right down 

to her voice—is “all in 

the hair, makeup, and 

voice muscle control.” 

The young man’s got 

pluck. How many people 

would wear a red terno, 

jump into a swimming 

pool, and pretend to 

drown? He lost a mole 

and almost caught a 

cold, but Rene Boy said 

“cheese” for this magazine’s 

cover shoot. 

It is courage and determination 

that make his GMA 

impersonation remarkable, 

plus the fact that he loves 

what he’s doing. “I don’t 

consider this a job, but as 

art,” he says. 

Rene Boy is taking up his 

Bachelor of Arts in Philippine 

Studies with majors in film and 

literature at UP Diliman. He 

is writing his thesis on youthoriented 

films while juggling 

appearances as Ate Glow. 

Ate Glow was born in 

2001, a few days after Edsa 

2, which ousted Erap and 

installed GMA as President. 

Recalls Rene Boy: “I was 

supposed to be a gay character 

doing satire in a show 

presented by UP Samaskom 

(Samahan ng mga Mag-aaral 

sa Komunikasyon). Then 

Edsa 2 happened. They 

asked me to do GMA. I was 

given three days to change 

the material. I’d never done 

impersonations so I was nervous. 

I thought I didn’t look like 

GMA and I certainly didn’t 

sound like her. But after that 

night, I became her.” 

And people liked what they 

saw and heard. “If you project 

the aura of the person you are 

impersonating, it transcends 

to the crowd,” Rene Boy explains. 

Or as Ate 

Glow puts it: “Ang 

saya-saya, noh?” 

In just four years, 

he has made three 

movies, appeared in 

various TV shows, 

and even recorded 

an audio CD of children’s 

songs. When 

GMA’s term ends, 

“It will be hard,” 

says Rene Boy, “but 

I can always reposition my 

character. Showbiz is not 

the end-all and be-all of my 

life. I plan to go into film 

directing, photography, and 

writing.” 

Actually, 

his impersonations 

don’t 

start and end 

with Ate Glow. 

He can also 

do starlets 

Maui Taylor 

and Aubrey 

Miles. 

Ang sayasaya 

talaga! 


I REPORT

i 


Just for fun. Tony 

Velasquez can juggle 

oranges, but his real— 

and not-so-hidden—talent 

lies in mimicry. 

La Vida 

Doble 

TONY VELASQUEZ 

THEY HAVEN’T shown up yet in any 

of my medical scans. But I suspect that 

buried somewhere in my genome map, 

mixed in with the DNA of my mom 

and dad, are bits of mynah and parrot 

chromosomes. 

Not that I’m bird-brained, mind you 

(c’mon, say it, and I’ll peck your eyes 

out). It’s just that when I’m in the mood 

to be cuckoo, my vocal chords effortlessly 

adjust for the tone, pitch, and diction 

of say, FVR, Congressman Teddyboy 

Locsin, or for those tipsy moments, even 

Erap Estrada. All of them prominent, 

powerful men whose voices have to be 

heard, and whose voices I just love to 

mimic, with monologues that borrow 

from their speaking styles and favorite 

themes. When I’m in mynah/parrot 

mode, I don’t do it to ruffle anybody’s 

feathers. It’s just for laughs. 

And why not? These men are some 

of the most humorous politicians I’ve 

ever covered. If they weren’t making 

quips or cracking jokes themselves, I’d 

be copying their voices to crack jokes 

on their behalf. In a way, it’s my own 

personal tribute to them, along the lines 

of “imitation is the best form of piracy,” er, 

flattery. Which means that even if I screw 

them with my impersonations, I’ll still 

respect them the next morning. 

I don’t aspire to be a professional 

impersonator. I never did. I’m strictly 

amateur, holding impromptu performances 

during dull moments with colleagues at 

work, or while relaxing with friends. Once 

though, I used my FVR impersonation for 

the National Press Club’s 1997 Gridiron 

satire. The Gridiron is the NPC’s annual 

musical comedy play where the political 

high-and-mighty get skewered, rightly or 

wrongly, for either entertaining or irritating 

the public with their words and deeds. 

Then President FVR (Fidel V. Ramos to 

non-Pinoys) was in the audience, but it 

wasn’t the first occasion where he saw or 

heard me doing my spiels as “El Tabako.” 

The first time I sprang it on him was at 

a Palace cocktail party he hosted for the 

Malacanañg Press Corps in 1995, during 

which he threw in an impromptu raffle 

where, in what may be liberally construed 

as true Ilocano generosity, he gave away 

those wide golfing umbrellas and golf 

balls, all with his autograph. The members 

of the Corps urged me to emcee the 

raffle, and in that moment, like an evolving 

mutant superhero, my latent mynah/parrot 

ability kicked in. With raised 

thumb and a convincing FVR voice, I 

thundered one of his favorite lines, “Kaya 

ba natin ito (Can we do this)?” 

With a resounding cry of “Kaya!!” and 

peals of laughter from my audience, I 

proceeded to say in my FVR-voice, “Tonight, 

I will be raffling off…my autographed 

balls. But please, whoever gets them, 

please just display them. Don’t hit them! 

That would be too painful!” As First Lady 

Ming Ramos repeatedly slapped FVR’s 

arm while she laughed herself to tears, I 

recognized that, indeed, I had a modest 

talent that great impersonators like Willie 

Nepomuceno, Jon Santos, Rene Facunla 

(a.k.a. Ate Glow), and Jaja Bolivar (a.k.a. 

Kikiam Defensor) have honed to moneymaking 

perfection. In that serendipitous 

moment, I found myself considering a 

career change. 

IT TOOK just a second for me to realize 

that politics in the Philippines is funny 

enough by itself without impersonators 

adding the extra twist that makes it even 

more hilarious. Yet precisely because it 


gets to be so excruciatingly ridiculous, 

Philippine politics provides a treasure trove 

of issues for impersonators to play with. 

Recently, on the short-lived and now-defunct 

weekly show, “Isyu: Ang Pangulo, 

Special Edition,” which I co-hosted with 

Cheche Lazaro on ABS-CBN, Ate Glow and 

Kikiam Defensor put the Garci and Chacha 

controversies through the humor mill, 

grinding them up with sharp and wacky 

wit. We had Ate Glow in a segment where 

she phones in a question to an Ernie Baron 

sound-alike (yours truly), on how to prevent 

tooth decay, only to have “Ka Ernie” 

tell her that she has a bigger problem with 

“truth decay,” one that can only go away 

with – are you ready for this?—“Gloriagate 

toothpaste.” Pa-rum-pum! 

Some colleagues remarked later that 

it might have been inappropriate to treat 

these serious political issues too lightly. 

Certainly, these controversies have caused 

a lot of gnashing of teeth and growling 

among disgruntled Filipinos, most of all 

the anti-Gloria forces. But tension was 

running high during the president’s nearimpeachment 

crisis, and impersonators 

did their share in defusing as much of this 

as they comically could. This is where 

they became most medically useful: comic 

relief for the republic’s biggest political 

headaches. In the nation’s search for the 

truth behind Gloriagate, impersonators 

may not be able to break or untangle a 

web of lies, but they do what they do to 

break the ice, expecting, of course, that as 

the targets of their humor fall through the 

cracks, the sound of laughter will drown 

out the sound of angry protests. 

Personally, I don’t think any public 

figure that’s been spoofed should get 

upset or offended (or charge a copyright 

fee). Senator Aquilino Pimentel (when 

he was still very fond of President Gloria 

Macapagal-Arroyo) once criticized shows 

that spoofed President GMA, simply 

because he felt she was being ridiculed. 

Impersonators usually do caricatures of 

prominent people not because they dislike 

them, but quite the opposite. The 

“Ate Glow” character spoof of 24-year-old 

comedian Rene Facunla is one example. 

Facunla told Newsbreak magazine in a 

2003 interview that he considered the real 

Ate Glo (GMA of course) “a president of 

substance,” and added that his friends 

believed his impersonation was “helping 

the president improve her image.” 

Then again, that was two years ago, 

long before the Garci controversy exploded, 

and long before Ate Glow’s 

“president of substance” was challenged 

by an impeachment complaint “lacking in 

substance.” (Do we hear the good Senator 

Pimentel now asking for more ridiculous 

Ate CATHY Glo CANTADA spoofs?) This time around, 

PHOTOS BY LILEN UY 

MAKEUP 

HAIR Malacañang’s JERRY JAVIER attempts to evade or brush 

STYLIST aside the GUADA Garci REYES issue has spawned copycat 

Ate THANKS Glows TO in MANDY protest NAVASERO rallies. SPECIAL Definitely, 

none of them 

has anything glowing 

to say about Ate 

Glo. But all of them 

are weapons of mass 

distraction, drawing the 

public’s attention to the 

alleged sins of Ate Glo. 

AS FAR as great impersonations 

go, though, the Garci tapes may showcase 

the best of them. That could be why it took 

weeks after bootleg CD copies of the tapes 

were given away in rallies and in schools, 

and after Congress listened to recorded conversations 

in open session, for Environment 

Secretary Mike Defensor to come up with 

an audio analysis of the tapes and draw this 

enigmatic conclusion: “That’s the president’s 

voice, but she’s not the one talking.” 

Okay, I can’t mimic this president’s voice. 

So was that you, Ate Glow? 

The Garci tapes were about wiretapping, 

and that’s a crime. But if, as 

Defensor seemingly implied, the tapes 

were the product of an impersonation, 

there’s a greater crime here – a crime 

against the humorous art of impersonation 

itself. Sure, history is replete with cases 

of the famous and the infamous using 

doppelgangers as decoys. At one point, 

there was even this rumor (long since debunked) 

that an impersonator was standing 

in for the real disco-loving Ferdinand 

‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr., who had supposedly 

died. None of these, by any stretch 

of the imagination, was for any humorous 

purpose. And I heard no laughter either 

while people listened to the Garci tapes. 

Impersonations in the Philippine setting 

are really just an expression of the 

The great 

pretender. 

Velasquez hosts 

office parties 

when he’s not 

reporting on 

the news or 

pretending to be 

Joseph Estrada 

(above). 

Filipino’s fun-loving, 

and occasionally 

sarcastic, nature. 

The Garci tapes are 

nowhere near that 

kind of expression. 

If anything, they have 

evoked only expressions 

of disgust and dismay, and 

deprecating humor. 

A flood of text jokes did pour out 

from the Garci episode. But one of the 

more unexpected and surreal results was 

the sudden re-emergence…of Elvis. Yes, 

Elvis was once more in the building! Or 

to be more specific, in the studio of the 

government-run NBN Channel 4. Hot on 

the heels of the Garci controversy, and 

at the height of opposition attacks on 

the Arroyo government, NBN launched 

a show, “Dagundong (Reverberations),” 

where the hosts and the guests mingled 

on a set designed to look like your 

neighborhood sari-sari store. Conspicuously 

in the background stood Elvis…actually, 

Elvis impersonator Edgar Opida. 

In the initial episode of ABS-CBN’s 

“Isyu: Ang Pangulo,” I asked Opida to 

come over and make sense of why an 

Elvis impersonator would be part of 

Malacanang’s media counter-offensive. 

Opida really couldn’t say, or maybe I 

just couldn’t make out his version of a 

Memphis mumble. In any case, I still 

don’t know if there was any subliminal 

message in having an Elvis look-andsound 

alike on the NBN show—except 

maybe to ask Ate Glo, “Are you lonesome 

tonight?” or to warn her that she 

was dangerously close to dancing the 

“Jailhouse Rock.” 

That Elvis episode reminded me of 

something the late great U.S. TV host 

Johnny Carson once said: “If life were 

fair, Elvis would be alive and all the 

impersonators would be dead.” To borrow 

from Carson, if life in the Philippines 

were fair, all the real politicians would 

disappear, and their impersonators would 

be left behind. After all, the impersonators 

cheer us up, make us forget our 

troubles, and achieve what their real-life 

political counterparts haven’t done: bring 

Filipinos together in feeling good about 

something—anything. 

It is to everyone’s benefit that when 

impersonators go and get a life, they 

copy somebody else’s, to the point of 

hilarity. They are the embodiment of la 

vida doble (no relation to that lothario 

of a wiretapper, Sgt. Vidal Doble). And 

in sharing with us the wit and humor of 

their double (or more) lives, our own 

existence becomes much more pleasant 

and bearable in the end. 

When he isn’t impersonating presidents, 

Tony Velasquez is a news correspondent 

of ABS-CBN. 

i 


I REPORT 

41

i 

> 


Mobile 

Clowning 

SHEILA S. CORONEL 

THE EVER-PRESENT mobile phone may 

have changed the way Filipinos communicate 

with each other, but it has not 

restrained their sense of humor. Far from 

it. Instead, the mobile phone has served 

as an efficient transmitter and disseminator 

of jokes, particularly of the political 

variety. Thanks to cellphones, jokesters 

have had a field day as their attempts at 

humor are not only sent out instantaneously, 

but are also passed on from phone 

to phone to phone to phone… 

There are over 30 million cellphone 

users in the country today. The potential 

audience for a single joke is thus easily 

in the millions, surpassing the audiences 

of newspapers and all but the best-rating 

television and radio programs. Chances 

are, every Pinoy who owns a 

mobile phone has used 

it, not just for passing 

on personal messages 

but also jokes. Phone 

company executives 

say that jokes are a 

staple of SMS messaging, 

surpassing 

most other types 

of messages sent. 

This, plus the amazing 

speed in which 

jokes can travel 

in the mobilephone 

age, can 

only encourage 

amateur humorists 

of every stripe. 

And almost surely, 

within hours, even 

minutes, of a major 

news event, some 

joker somewhere 

has already 

forwarded to all 

in his or her address book a 

polished gem of humor. 

The “Gloriagate” political crisis that began 

in mid-2005 has inspired a resurgence 

of political humor. The crisis was set off 

by the release of wiretapped recordings of 

the phone calls made and received 

by elections commissioner Virgilio 

Garcillano in May and June 2004. Some of 

those calls discussed election fraud. Several 

of them were from President Gloria 

Macapagal-Arroyo, who began her calls 

with the now famous line, “Hello, Garci?” 

Not long after excerpts from the “Hello, 

Garci” recording were made public in 

early June 2005, cellphones were buzzing 

with jokes about the tapes. The symmetry 

was perfect: cellphone jokes about 

cellphone calls. Where else, but in a cellphone-crazy 

country can this take 

place? Within days, too, the first 

“Hello, Garci” ringtones made 

the rounds. 

Spliced from some of the 

audio material (particularly 

President Arroyo’s inimitable 

voice) contained in the 

wiretapped conversations and 

combined with pop music, 

the ring tones 

were the delight 

of cellphone users. 

They were 

passed on from phone 

to phone and were also 

posted for downloading 

in MP3 format 

in a number of 

blogs and websites. 

This was ideal for 

music-mad Pinoys, 

many of whom 

owned, apart from 

cellphones, also 

MP3 players. Within three weeks after 

the tapes were made public, there were 

already two dozen versions of the “Hello, 

Garci” ring tone. Most were made available 

for downloading from several cyberplaces, 

among them the PCIJ blog (www. 

pcij.org/blog). Perhaps only in the Philippines 

has the ring tone been used as a 

weapon of resistance: by passing them on, 

anonymous ring-tone composers and disseminators 

defied the government warning 

that propagating any part the wiretapped 

conversations is illegal. 

The ring tones are gems of political 

humor, their combination of music and wit 

irresistible. There is no purer distillation of 

Pinoy humor in the cellphone era than the 

“Hello, Garci” ring tones. 

FILIPINOS like to think that they can 

laugh at anything, and however much they 

put themselves down, they believe that 

their sense of humor is not only a defining 

national trait but also their saving grace. 

Among the most strongly held of Pinoy 

beliefs is that the ability to laugh—especially 

at themselves and the dire circumstances 

they find themselves in—has enabled 

Filipinos to survive not only natural 


calamity and 

social upheaval, 

but also the strange 

world of Philippine politics 

and the even stranger 

characters who inhabit it. 

“Humor has many 

uses in the Philippines,” 

writes film director Jose 

Javier Reyes. “As leveler, 

it serves to expose the 

foibles of people in high 

office, thus bringing them 

down to the company of ordinary 

men. Humor is also used to circumvent taboos… 

Humor, both irreverent and banal, 

serves as a soft rebellion against what is 

otherwise regarded with awe or considered 

correct behavior.” 

To Filipinos, humor has always been 

a form of protest. Our national heroes 

used it in the struggle against Spanish 

colonialism. Jose Rizal poked fun at both 

colonial authorities and his countrymen 

who wanted to be more Spanish than the 

Spaniards. Marcelo del Pilar used political 

satire to hit at the Spanish friars who 

dominated Philippine life and the hypocritical 

Christianity that they preached. 

In their everyday lives, ordinary 

Filipinos resort to joking and humor to 

undermine the rich and powerful who 

have long kept them in thrall. Humor has 

always been the preferred weapon of the 

weak in this country. The powerful may 

prevail in the end, but they can always 

be subjected to mockery, mimickry, and 

ridicule. Jokes are subversive. They are, 

as Reyes says, the great leveler, a way of 

fighting back, a path of resistance. 

If anything, cellphones have made 

this path easier to take. Any Joey or Josie 

can think up a joke, key it into a phone, 

and pass it on. You don’t have to be a 

Jose Rizal or a Marcelo del Pilar. You 

don’t have to deal with censors or editors 

either. In the anonymous, instantaneous, 

and spontaneous world of 

mobile telephony, everyone is 

welcome and all jokers are 

equal. Any joke is passed 

on as long as the receiver 

finds it funny. 

Jokes can be said 

to be an important 

artifact of our 

life as a nation. 

They are not just 

a commentary on 

our politics and 

politicians, they 

are a form of 

political participation. 

The effect 

may not be quite the 


MAKEUP same as CATHY displaying CAN- 

TADA a placard in a 

HAIR demonstration, 

JERRY JAVIER 

STYLIST but by GUADA joking, 

Filipinos 

show that 

they are 

watching, 

commenting, 

and taking 

part in what is 

going on. Jokes are as good 

an indicator of the public 

pulse as opinion polls are. 

The fall of Ferdinand Marcos 

was preceded by an avalanche 

of jokes. The election of Joseph 

Estrada was also foretold by the jokes, 

and indeed, so was his ouster. It is safe to 

say that any major upheaval or development 

in our political life is punctuated by 

jokes. 

Jokes, therefore, are like tea leaves: 

those who are astute enough can tell the 

political future by reading them well. But 

we will not go that far. Lacking that kind 

of astuteness, we can only say that the 

jokes currently circulating and entertaining 

us show that Pinoy humor is as irreverent 

and indiscriminate as ever. The jokes 

poke fun at politicians of every stripe. 

While many are jokes about President Arroyo, 

there are many as well that ridicule 

actor Fernando Poe Jr., who lost to Arroyo 

in the 2004 elections. Vice President Noli 

de Castro and the other celebrity-politicos 

have not been spared. And neither has 

the unflappable Senator Miriam Defensor 

Santiago. She is up there in the jokers’ 

pantheon, together with Erap Estrada, 

Imelda Marcos, and the crank presidential 

candidate Eddie Gil (who, when asked by 

a TV journalist what a normal day for him 

was, answered “Saturday”). 

Some of the jokes, in fact, poke fun at 

the entire political class (Sample: Political 

curse: May you have a wife like Imelda, a 

daughter like Kris, a mistress like Baby, a 

son like Jude, and a husband like Mike.) 

Some jokes are mean (remember the baby 

stroller delivered to Erap’s Tanay resthouse, 

in preparation for GMA?). Others 

are green or some other off-color; 

many are politically incorrect. 

But all of them reflect the sentiments—and 

the frustrations—of 

the political moment. Jokes are 

the true signs of the times, 

even as they make the 

unbearable bearable, 

eliciting laughter as we 

shed tears over the failings 

of our leaders and 

o f ourselves. 

i 

This is an excerpt 

from the preface 

of the PCIJ’s latest 

book, Hello, Garci? 

Hello, Maam: 

Political Humor 

in the Cellphone 

Age. 

JOKE ONLY! 

We all know what PROs and Cons are. What 

is the opposite of PROgress? 

CONgress! 

How does GMA sleep? 

First she lies to one side, then she lies to the 

other side. 

Teacher: Today we’re studying percentages. If 

there are 10 questions in a quiz and you get 

10 correct, what do you get? 

GMA: Accused of cheating. 

May threat na naman daw sa buhay ni Zuce. 

Pinadalhan siya ng mansanas at kawayan. 

Galing daw kay Aling Lydia, as in Lydia’s 

Lechon. 

Good morning, countrymen. This is Noli de 

Castro, your future president. I would like to 

apologize in advance for all the lapses in judgment 

that I will commit. I’M SORRY, BAYAN. 

GMA: Sana palarin akong magkamit ng katangian 

nina Cory at Susan. 

Reporter: Ano po yon, ma’am? 

GMA: Ang pagiging biyuda nila. Wala sanang 

problema ang bayan. 

Reporter: What is your plan now, Madame 

President? 

GMA: I have thought of drowning my troubles 

but I can’t get my husband and son to go 

swimming. 

Mike: Whenever Gloria asks for her share of 

jueteng money, she calls me handsome. 

Nani: Really? 

Mike: Yes, she says, “Hoy, HAND SOME of 

that money over.” 

A man just died and was asked by St. Peter: 

Where do you come from? 

Man: Philippines, Sir. 

St. Peter: You may enter heaven…you’ve suffered 

enough from your opposition politicians. 

Daddy: ‘Nak, bili mo ko ng softdrink. 

Anak: Coke of Pepsi? 

Daddy: Coke 

Anak: Diet o regular? 

Daddy: Regular 

Anak: Bote o in can? 

Daddy: Bote 

Anak: 8 oz o litro? 

Daddy: Punyeta! Tubig na lang. 

Anak: Mineral o natural? 

Daddy: Mineral 

Anak: Malamig o hindi? 

Daddy: ‘Tang ina, hampasin kita ng walis, e! 

Anak: Tambo o tingting 

Daddy: Hayop ka! 

Anak: Baka o baboy? 

Daddy: TARAN- 

TADO! 

Anak: De Venecia o 

ang Kongreso? 

More jokes are in 

Hello, Garci? Hello, 

Ma’am: Political 

Humor in the Cellphone 

Age. For 

inquiries, contact 

marketing 

@pcij.org or call 

9293117.) 

< 


I REPORT 

43

i 


Where Has 

All The 

Laughter 

Gone? 

KATRINA STUART SANTIAGO 

FIVE YEARS ago, we had a president who 

made as much fun of himself as everyone 

else did. Who had his very own jokebook, 

and his very own thinktank to make 

up stories and jokes that would revolve 

around his supposedly being uneducated, 

as well as his being uncouth and unpresidential. 

This was a time when President 

Joseph ‘Erap’ Estrada’s impeachment trial 

was proceeding in the Senate, and where 

the real stars of that show—the senators— 

provided us with all kinds of material for 

comedy. There we witness moments of 

high anger: (Miriam Defensor Santiago 

having two women kicked out of the Senate 

gallery for allegedly giving her inappropriate 

looks) and sorrowful tears (think 

Loren Legarda in hot pink), moments of 

insanity (Miriam Defensor Santiago, period) 

and just plain cluelessness (Ramon 

Revilla Sr., duh). As respite, there were 

the vocabulary lessons (who can spell 

“gobbledygook”?), the law lessons (“si Sir 

Roco kasi e!’”), and the lessons in patience 

(“Ang tanda na kase ni Ople na tulog 

nang tulog”— Ople’s so ancient, he can’t 

keep awake). And as a fitting climax to 

the show, there was that infamous dance 

number (by Tessie Aquino-Oreta)! 

At that time, everyone was portrayed as 

fair game on the Internet and everywhere 

else—from text messages to emails, from 

print cartoons to comic strips. There was 

no escape. The Internet, after all, is the 

most liberal and liberating of media to 

work with—uncensorable, untouchable, 

although perhaps also incomprehensible 

to many. Then, so much was published 

from the computers of hi-tech Pinoys who 

could only deal with the Erap presidency 

by consistently putting down the man, his 

cohorts, and all those who voted for him. 

Proof of this production is the fact that 

when PCIJ’s Alecks Pabico decided to look 

at online Pinoy parodies of that time, there 

was just so much to cover (http://www.pcij. 

org/imag/Online/pinoyparody.html). 

Everyone wanted a piece of the action 

then, if only as audience to such a creative 

force. This creativity easily moved from 

computer screens to the streets of EDSA 2, 

when people created and recreated chants 

to fit the hated senator of the moment, 

and when banners and streamers were 

as funny, and disrespectful, as they could 

come. Then, it was our way of dealing with 

a historical juncture that we thought was not 

our doing (we didn’t vote for that man!), but 

which we felt we could do something about. 

At the very least, we could shake our heads 

in disgust and bring the hysteria to the point 

of laughter—online and beyond. 

Now, a failed EDSA 3 and a junked 

impeachment complaint against the new 

president later, most of those sites that 

Pabico featured—even writer Bob Ong’s 

website (http://www.bobongpinoy.com)— 

are dead links (pun intended). And one 

can’t help but wonder why. 

It cannot be that there’s nothing to laugh 

about at this point, can it? If it’s true that 

all things humorous are based on grains of 

reality, then laughter need not end. And yet, 

as we continue to receive and forward funny 

text messages and emails of jokes, editorial 

cartoons, and comic strips from print media, 

delving into the state of this GMA-Garci nation 

(the last email I saw has GMA’s face plastered 

onto a dancing Sexbomb girl’s body), 

there is quite a silence on the Internet front. 

THIS IS not to say that nothing is being 

written. There are tons of complaints, 

many bordering on anger. But instead of 

sites dedicated to parodying or satirizing 

the daily events that should so concern us, 

what’s proliferating are weblogs or blogs. 

These are online diaries that can be on anything 

and everything, with no pretensions 

to objectivity or truth, and with illusions of 

an audience that will want to read through 

text upon text of opinion, rants, and raves. 

There are, of course, bloggers who have 

used the form of the blog well, basically 

because they know what they want it to be 

about. Luis Teodoro’s site (www.luisteodoro. 

com) is basically just on politics for example, 

while Paolo Manalo’s site has always been 

on Pinoy (pop) culture (be it in the old 

www.psychicpants.net and the spanking new 

http://www.livejournal.com/~paolomanalo). 

These blogs also seem to have a clear sense 

of an audience, limited though it may be. 

Manalo’s blog, in particular, is funny, not just 

because of its chosen concern but because 

it is lightly and cleverly written. But it rarely 

talks about politics. 

In contrast, there are blogs that 

are overtly political, such as www.angasngkurimaw.blogspot.com 

and www. 

ourthoughtsarefree.blogspot.com, which 

zero in on issues—including media responsibility, 

cultural ineptitude, and GMA’s 

hardheadedness—hitting the nail on the 

head every time. But perhaps because of 

the seriousness with which politics do need 

to be dealt with, there’s rarely anything to 

laugh about in these political blogs. The 

funny blogs I’ve found, meanwhile, are 

mostly nonpolitical if not altogether apolitical. 

There’s the http://akosipaeng.blogspot. 

com blog by a Pinoy who seems to always 

write about his world as if he’s seeing it for 

the first time; and there are those blogs like 

www.tabulas.com/~apester that talks about 


nothing else but food in its recent incarnation, 

but has always been fun easy reading. 

It is these types of Pinoy blogs, which are 

more personal diaries than political commentary, 

more this-is-my-life than this-is-the-stateof-the-nation, 

that have made up much of our 

Internet production in recent years. The blog 

of course has been celebrated as something 

that can function as an alternative source of 

information (the PCIJ has its own blog, for 

example). For the most part, however, it has 

been used by Pinoy techies as a form through 

which they may write without limits, even 

when there’s nothing much to say. It has 

become the rule rather than the exception to 

be apolitical and apathetic in the blogs we 

create, and that in itself, is no laughing matter. 

A personal blog like www.professionalheckler.blog-city.com 

is a rare exception 

in that it ridicules the political state of the 

nation by poking fun at its personalities 

–akin to Erap’s time. More known for his 

spoofs of political speeches, blogger Loi 

Reyes Landicho calls the site a humor blog 

born of his agitation over recent political 

events, which to him make for “desperate 

times require desperate measures.” 

But because of the form that it takes, 

what Landicho really offers the blog-reader 

is still just a hodgepodge of thoughts on 

various issues and events that may be 

political (why is there no outrage over the 

junked impeachment complaint?) but are 

not always so (why didn’t U.P. win in a 

recent pep squad competition?). Still, Landicho 

can be funny, especially with his Top 

10 Lists a la David Letterman. A recent one 

is “The Top 10 (Silliest) Reasons Why GMA 

Won’t Resign” (September 23 blog entry): 

1. Unlike the Ejercitos, her family does 

not own a posh villa in Tanay, Rizal. 

In the event that she goes to jail, she 

would languish at Camp Capinpin, 

deprived of the same luxury being 

enjoyed by her predecessor. 

2. She would never allow some guy 

named Manuel ‘Noli’ de Castro, a graduate 

of some school known as UE to take over 

the presidency. She did not spend years at 

Assumption, Ateneo, UP, and Georgetown 

only to give way to a UE graduate! [Taaskilay 

to the 9th degree… hmmpf!] 

3. Resigning would enrage her god 

whom she claims to be on her side and 

who makes everything possible for her. 

Remember her father’s dictum that has 

become her favorite cliché? “Do what 

issh right. Do your bessht and God will 

take care of the ressht.” Whatever. 

4. Luck is still on her side. [As I have discussed 

here before, she is fated to become 

president.] Filipinos have more important 

things to do than join rallies. Despite unfavorable 

SWS, Pulse Asia and Ibon Foundation 

surveys showing unprecedented 


MAKEUP CATHY CANTADA 

HAIR public JERRY dissatisfaction JAVIER and distrust, fact is, 

STYLIST these GUADA are just REYES figures. People would rather 

SPECIAL feed THANKS their families TO MANDY than NAVASERO burn effigies. 

5. GMA won’t step down unless Cong. 

Mikey Arroyo wins an acting plum. 

His latest movie, Sablay na, Pasaway 

Pa [which had its premiere in Biliran 

Province some time in June] has yet 

to be shown in Metro Manila theaters. 

Reports say bookers decline to release 

the cheap flick for obvious reasons. 

6. She will only relinquish her post as 

soon as the Philippines has overtaken 

Indonesia in the Asian corruption index 

ranking. We’re still at number 2. Becoming 

number 1 would be a feat indeed! 

7. The concept of delicadeza is alien to her. 

8. GMA simply cannot imagine herself behind 

bars while the First Gentleman goes 

shopping in Hong Kong with Vicky Toh. 

9. GMA dreams of a royal wedding for 

her only daughter Luli in Malacañang. 

Not in Lubao Church, not at the Manila 

Cathedral. The plan is to invite heads of 

state as well as former US President and 

GMA classmate Bill Clinton. The event 

will eclipse the profligacy of the Imee 

Marcos-Tommy Manotoc wedding. 

10. And finally, GMA won’t resign because 

she’s not the president. She’s just 

an overstaying palace visitor. 

STRANGELY ENOUGH, while this list is 

funny in its “silliness,” all it musters is a 

smile—hardly a laugh. Probably because 

it hits too close to home, and there’s 

nothing funny in the way Landicho has 

reworked it. In fact, most of these could, 

if not altogether, be true (save for number 

9, which is actually referring to the Irene 

Marcos-Greggy Araneta wedding). It is 

obvious that GMA has no delicadeza, and 

it is possible that she has believed her 

own propaganda about God being on her 

side. Even more painfully true is the possibility 

that she’s just lucky—people aren’t 

in the mood for rallies, or for information 

that will lead them there. Number 10, in 

particular, isn’t funny because it reminds 

us that we may have handled Erap and 

EDSA 2 all wrong. In fact, the funniest 

thing about this list is the way it makes 

fun of GMA’s speech defect (see number 

3), which is similar to the way we made 

fun of Erap’s grammar. 

So, why doesn’t this work? If Landicho’s 

blog entry for September 6 entitled 

“The Award Goes To” is any indication, 

then this may have more to do with 

ideology than with creativity. This entry 

pokes fun at the personalities involved 

in the impeachment case against GMA. 

There the “Cry Me a River” award for 

example, given to Dinky Soliman for 

crying publicly three times since resigning 

as social-welfare secretary, while still 

looking “fashionable with the highlights 

in her hair Jolinaesque indeed!” 

There’s the “Mag-diet Ka Muna” award 

given to Taguig-Pateros Rep. Alan Peter 

Cayetano (for obvious reasons), and the 

“Not Enough Vitamins, Not Enough Life” 

award given to Sorsogon Rep. Francis 

Escudero for being absent during the 

pro-impeachment walkout in Congress 

because, according to him, he was ill. 

Here, it becomes clear why Landicho’s 

humor blog isn’t always funny. On the 

one hand, it has the temerity to make 

fun of the current state of the nation 

(when it wants to). On the other, it isn’t 

very clear where the blog stands in all 

these issues. When we find the need to 

poke fun at both GMA and her opposition, 

i.e., Soliman, Cayetano, Escudero et 

al., we also end up being unclear about 

who we’re for. As far as Landicho’s blog 

is concerned, strong statements are also 

made against what he calls the “obsolete 

Left,” obviously without taking into consideration 

all the steps this Left has taken 

toward compromise over and above the 

rallies that it has led. In Erap’s time, our 

enemies were clear, and our allies even 

clearer. We did not criticize both sides, 

and we reveled in having more and more 

people on our side—the Left, the Right, 

the religious in all its denominations. 

Now, as far as the professional heckler is 

concerned, there are no enemies, or any 

allies. And it’s unclear what all that (supposed) 

laughter is addressing. 

Over at another humor blog, the sides 

are even less clearly drawn. Created by 

graphic artist, now blogger Retzwerx, 

www.retzwerx.com has become known 

for what are called “poop-to-graphs.” 

Here, Philippine politics is made fun of 

by adding thought and speech balloons 


I REPORT 

45


to photographs of the President, for 

example, and her gang: 

That this is barely funny is again proof 

of the mediocrity of political humor on the 

Internet today. What exactly is it making 

fun of? Is it making fun of GMA? For having 

done what exactly? What is it grounded 

on? That Retzwerx himself has recently 

shifted from politics to reality TV’s “Pinoy 

Big Brother” as main topic is indicative not 

of the freedom allowed the blogger who 

owns his blog, but of the lack of a clear 

political agenda that should drive any site 

set on inspiring change through laughter. 

For the most part, it looks like the Pinoy 

blogs that have the guts to make fun of our 

politics are really only reactionary. They 

don’t have a clear stand on things, much 

less a sense of what to aspire for. 

BEYOND THE blogs though, there seems 

to be hope, albeit a very small one. The 

site www.pldt.com has continued to survive, 

and is in fact one of the few sites that 

fills that gap between the anti-Erap parody 

sites and the anti-GMA angry/reactionary 

blogs. While serious in its thrust of being 

anti-Arroyo at this point, particularly after 

the impeachment complaint was junked 

in Congress (see http://www.pldt.com/ 

tipping%20point.htm), the site itself continues 

to be a force to reckon with. Not only 

does it continue to belong to the Top 50 

Google sites in the news/satire directory, it 

also continues to rightly claim that it cares 

for the state of the nation, beyond Erap Estrada 

and EDSA 2. Just the same, however, 

there is obviously a lot less irreverence 

now than there was in Erap’s time—and a 

lot more anger directed at GMA. 

Probably the only site that more than 

makes up for the dismal lack in political 

humor in light of current events is 

journalist Alan C. Robles’s online tabloid 

Hot Manila (www.hotmanila.com). Created 

by someone who has been writing 

political humor in newspapers for 

nearly 20 years, Hot Manila is clear in its 

stand and has a good grasp of issues. It 

is also well-researched, and obviously 

well-thought out. It uses graphics and 

photographs as well, alongside anti-GMA 

articles that make fun of her and the way 

she runs the country. It creates lists, too, 

but only to point out the parallelism, say, 

between having GMA as your lavandera 

and having her as president. (Among the 

top 10 reasons you wouldn’t want her as 

lavandera, it says, is that she might “launder 

something other than your clothes.”) 

Hot Manila skewers other political 

personalities, such as the missing elections 

commissioner Garcillano in an article 

entitled “Cooking with Garci” (http://www. 

hotmanila.com/humor/cookbook.htm), 

which is a cook (read: pagluluto ng eleksyon) 

book that’s particularly his (Recipe 

1: Malacañang Delight, take one ballot 

box, and that’s it!). “The Arroyo administration: 

Good and bad,” meanwhile, is not 

only funny but is also a reminder of how 

this government has wasted money, ignored 

public clamor for better governance, and 

helped big business in its continuing plunder 

of the economy all these years (http://www. 

hotmanila.com/humor/good&bad.htm). 

But a Hot Manila that captures an audience’s 

attention because of its humor, and 

also informs enough to force us to take a 

stand is but one in a sea of sites and blogs. 

Generally, what we have are sites that are 

nothing but exercises in proving one’s ability 

to write and attract a readership, even 

when one isn’t saying much. This is what 

abounds today, to the country’s detriment, 

and the GMA government’s delight. 

This brings to mind a friend’s observation 

that it was so much easier to gather people, 

i.e., the middle class, against Erap because 

of the “matapobre factor.” We felt that he 

was not good enough for us, and we were 

fighting him on all levels—particularly on 

the Internet where nothing is censored, and 

where the jokes and parodies can go from 

foolish and childish to great and creative. 

These days the lack of online laughter is not 

The Arroyo Administration: Good and Bad 

GOOD 

Spent more than P600 million on road building 

Killed Marcos henchman and arch opportunist 

Blas Ople by forcing him to do real work 

Magnanimously went out of its way to help out 

a family that was in serious trouble 

Successfully redistributed incomes 

Showed that any ordinary nincompoop could 

run the Department of Trade 

Won the war against terrorists 

Made the country recall President Diosdado 

Macapagal’s greatness 

Showed extraordinary compassion 

Fought corruption 

Was the first administration in 30 years to 

successfully invite a US president over for a 

state visit 

46 PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM I REPORT 

only a measure of our stand on things, if any, 

but is also revealing of how exactly the Net 

functions in this country: it is really but a middle-class 

tool, and one that we used successfully 

against Erap because he wasn’t like us. 

Faced with a president who is the opposite 

of Erap—a GMA who is highly educated 

and doesn’t seem to be crass, and who talks 

about the economy with such authority we 

come to believe what she says as true —our 

Internet production has become useless. We 

can’t quite see GMA as the enemy, since the 

enemy in this case is Noli de Castro, who is 

perceived to be of Erap’s social and educational 

class. It is the “matapobre factor” all 

over again, except that this time, it is working 

for the incumbent because the pobre who 

can’t quite measure up is the vice president. 

With the really funny parodies and 

satires, laughter becomes the only defense 

against the truthfulness. But what happens 

when those truths aren’t clear to us? What is 

there to laugh about when the reality means 

looking at ourselves and being uncertain 

and lost, counting on others to tell us what 

to think? We cannot make fun of the state 

of the nation without being serious about 

where we stand. We can’t just simply hate 

everyone—the government, the opposition, 

the church, the communists—without having 

a sense of the different colors they carry, 

and what those colors mean. We also can’t 

simply be angry—that doesn’t achieve much, 

as proven by EDSAs 2 and 3. Maybe that’s 

why blogs like professionalheckler’s just 

aren’t funny. There are no truths to pick on 

and laugh about so hard that it hurts. 

Meanwhile, as we problematize the fact 

that we can barely laugh in this country, elsewhere 

in the Pinoy internet (blogging) world, 

young poets are fighting among themselves 

over their craft, their influences, their art. Now 

THAT, in the context of a nation in the throes 

of despair, is worth laughing at. 

The author is working on her master’s 

degree at the U.P. She is a freelance writer 

and editor, but her passion is teaching. 

BAD 

It was just one road 

Declared his corpse a national hero 

It was the Lopez family 

Nobody knows where the incomes were 

redistributed to 

He wasn’t an ordinary nincompoop 

The terrorists don’t know it 

Seems there was nothing to recall 

To Joseph Estrada 

Corruption won 

The president turned out to be 

George W. Bush 

i

i 

> 


Kick 

Out the 

Clowns 

ALAN C. ROBLES 

OUR FOLKLORE is populated by frightful, 

bizarre monsters. For instance, there’s 

the aswang, a shape-changing horror that 

eats human fetuses and runs for public 

office. Or the amaranhig, an undead 

creature that tickles victims to death and 

runs for public office. Or the tikbalang, a 

horse-headed humanoid that attacks unwary 

travelers and runs for public office. 

Of course I’m lying. These creatures 

could actually never run for office— 

they’d be disqualified for being imaginary 

(they could probably cast votes, 

fictitious characters do that all that time 

in our country). But even if they were 

real and tried to run, they’d find all the 

positions already held by truly loathsome, 

bloodsucking abominations. 

You’re betting I’m going to say “politician,” 

aren’t you? How did you guess? But 

don’t think this is a cheap joke. Nothing 

about our politicians is cheap—we pay 

billions every year to support them. And 

what do we get in return? Dedicated, 

selfless and incorruptible service. Integrity 

and fearless espousal of the rights of the 

poor. If you aren’t laughing bitterly by 

now, you’re clearly not a Filipino taxpayer. 

Not many of us give too much 

thought to our politicians, and rightly so. 

There are more important things to think 

about, such as human intestinal flora, or 

the mating habits of tropical nematodes. 

But if we’d only spare some time and 

give some thought to our politicians, if 

we looked closely at the role they play 

in our lives and our country’s day-to-day 

dealings, then I’m pretty sure we’d immediately 

go back to the nematodes. 

Yet even a close study of nematodes, 

which reference books say include simple, 

parasitic worms ranging up to eight 

meters in length, has a disturbing way of 

bringing Filipino traditional politicians to 

mind. And it’s possible that studying our 

politicians will help us understand why 

our country is in its current shape (in a 

word, “screwed”). So if were to keep our 

inquiry dispassionate and treat politicians 

as we would any other slimy, spineless 

lower life form, we’d certainly come to a 

keener and deeper understanding of why 

we keep wanting to move abroad and 

change our citizenship. 

ANY DISCUSSION on politicians would 

have to begin with their origin. Most 

Filipinos would certainly love to know 

where their politicians come from (one 

reason is that maybe they can return them, 

or claim some form of product liability 

from the manufacturer). If we want to be 

mythological about it, we can speculate that 

our politicians were perhaps created at the 

dawn of time when lightning split a tree 

open, and from the trunk emerged the very 

first beings: Malakas, Maganda, and Magulang. 

One of them would have looked like 

a Speaker of the House. 

If we want be more scientific, then we 

can theorize that politicians, like all the rest 

of us, came from single-celled, primitive 

life forms, only in their case they skipped 

any further development. On an evolution 

chart, politicians would be somewhere 

between talk-show hosts and TV-commercial 

copywriters. Imelda Marcos would 

have her own branch, a dead end. Another 

possible explanation is that politicians are 

mutants who spring into existence when an 

otherwise normal person is brought near to 

a deadly, toxic substance like money. 

All politicians have similar characteristics: 

they have thick faces and hides and are 

immune to heat, cold, and extreme poverty. 

They are very nimble, able to spin around 

into any position while turning their coats. 

Just as cats are supposed to be able to always 

land upright, traditional politicians are capable 

of surviving any fall, landing on their feet 

with their hands still in your pocket. 

Generally speaking, Filipino politicians 

come in two varieties: alive and dead. If you 

think the dead ones can’t ruin your day at all, 

you clearly haven’t been paying attention to 

the names of the corpses being buried with 

honors at the National Heroes Cemetery. 

There are several types of live politicians, 

but the most common is the “traditional” 

variety, so called for their firm adherence to 

“traditional” core values, which are love of 

self and self-interest, in that order. Traditional 

politicians—trapos for short—have 

keen analytical minds that enable them to 

see all sides in an issue, so that they can 

pick the one that will help them fulfill their 

main purpose: to build huge mansions and 

send their kids to school abroad using other 

people’s money. In fact, one of the dead 

giveaways that a person is a trapo is that his 

or her home keeps steadily getting bigger 

each year. Through hard work and patience, 

a politician who starts with a humble modest 

house could in a few years hope to end up 

owning the Lower House. 

POLITICIANS USUALLY belong to groups 

called “parties.” There used to be only two 

of them, the Nacionalistas and the Liberalistas, 

but free-market economics and globalization 

have opened up the field so that now 

there are dozens of parties. But all of them 

can trace their roots to that great “mother 

party” of the Philippines, the Opportunistas. 

To help them in their work politicians 

rely on a variety of faithful assistants and 

supporters, which they create by synthesizing 

life in great unholy laboratories. Just 

kidding. Actually they buy them: in the 

marketplace, where flunkies are available 

at great volume discounts. When Americans 

hear the word “stooges” they probably think 

of that famous comedy team of Larry, Moe, 

and Curly Joe. Here in our country, stooges 

go by many names, for instance, Belinda, 

Alex, and Amando. They will remain loyal 

until death, or until the next administration 

changes, whichever comes first. 

And of course, no trapo is complete 

without at least guards, affectionately 

called “goons,” to protect his or her 

person. Even if the trapo doesn’t need 

protection, a squad of goons brandishing 

handheld radios and guns always give the 

right touch of class. Some trapos bring 

them everywhere, even to the bathroom. 

Having briefly discussed politicians, we 

now come to the most important question: 

where is the best country to move to? No, actually, 

the question is what are our politicians 

good for? The popular view is that politics is a 

circus and that our politicians are clowns who 

entertain the public and make them laugh. 

Just look at these great moments of 

comedy. In 1949, the Senate president, Jose 

Avelino was investigated for corruption. He 

got very angry and exclaimed, “What are we 

in power for?” He got off the hook. In 2001, 

Tessie Aquino Oreta, a senator who voted 

to protect Joseph Estrada and was caught on 

video capering gleefully about it, later told an 

interviewer, “What is most important to me is 

my family.” And this year, it was discovered 

that the president’s eldest son, Congressman 

Mikey Arroyo, was worth P74 million, when 

last decade he only had P50,000. 

Okay, so you might not find that funny. 

But at least the clowns are laughing. 

Alan C. Robles is editor of Hot Manila, a 

columnist at the South China Morning 

Post, and a lecturer at the International 

Institute for Journalism in Berlin. 

i 


M A I L B O X 

SCAPEGOATING THE SYSTEM 

In “The Unmaking of the President” (i 

Report Special Issue), Ms. Sheila Coronel 

faults mainly the social and political 

system or structure for the recurring crises 

that afflict the Philippines rather than 

on the individual. What is suggested by 

this position is that if we just reform the 

system or the structure, we would spare 

ourselves from these recurring crises. 

But it is individuals that make up 

and operate the political system and 

the agencies of government not just of 

the Philippines but of all systems and 

governments. According to Buddhist 

precepts, the world is on fire with desire 

and aversion. We are constantly running 

after things that are pleasurable and are 

fleeing from things that displease us. No 

one is immune from these twin afflictions 

for as long as one is immersed in the 

phenomenal world of impermanence. 

Ms. Coronel in the very first sentence 

of her article captures a key Buddhist 

principle regarding individual karma— 

whatever you sow, so shall you reap. It 

is also one of the key teachings of Jesus 

Christ. It is not just Filipinos who suffer 

as a result of their ignorance of their true 

nature and the pursuit of their desires and 

ambitions. It is a universal and existential 

condition and not just the effect of any 

particular political system or structure. 

Anywhere we look in this world, there is 

suffering and ignorance. Rich and poor, 

developed and developing countries are 

all in the same condition. Absolutely no 

one is spared. 

In the Philippines, we are witnessing 

today the high drama of individuals 

caught up in their insatiable hunger for 

power, money, position, popularity and 

possessions. What makes it scandalous 

is that our highest officials are involved. 

But let us not delude ourselves because the 

same ignorance, hunger, aversion, suffering 

and dissatisfaction exist in all of us. 

Yes, we remain trapped in this condition 

but not because of our political system 

or our social structure. It is because the 

seeds of ignorance, desire and aversion are 

deeply implanted in our very being. 

ED ARO 

The Philippine Embassy 

The Hague, Netherlands 

WRONG FORMAT 

Your first issue, about food is amazingly 

worthy reading. I found the book formatreally 

interesting. It will also last, considering 

the kind of paper used. That was the 

main reason why I decided to subscribe to 

the i Report. 

All the while, I was expecting to 

receive the same type of material. To my 

dismay, your September issue (despite 

its important contents) was presented in 

a magazine format and had a less lasting 

cover. I am sorry, but I do not agree with 

your reasons that magazine vendors like it 

that way to attract more customers. 

I want you to revert to your original 

book format, which will be on my shelves 

for a longer time. 

LAURENCE L. DELINA 

Civil engineer 

laurence_delina@yahoo.com 

The editor’s reply: 

Thank you for your feedback. We regret 

that you do not find the magazine format 

of i Report as interesting as the book format. 

The change in format was a difficult 

one for us to make. But in the end, our 

sales and circulation—which have nearly 

tripled since the format change—reaffirm 

our decision. I hope you understand. I 

prefer the book format myself, but I have to 

concede that the market at this time seems 

to be more hospitable to the current, magazine 

format. 

COMPARATIVE GOVERNMENT 

I am one of the many who admire the 

timely relevance of your articles, and the 

depth of your analyses. It is just so sad 

that after everything has been said and 

done, we make issues come to pass like 

these were simply part of everyday life, 

and accept the system that breeds what 

is basically wrong in our society. I grew 

up in the days when individual and family 

honor were revered and the likes of 

Salonga, Tañada, Diokno, Rodrigo, etc. 

graced the halls of intelligent and nationalistic 

discourse. Gone may be those days, 

but our basic sense of right and wrong remains. 

We know what you write is right. 

As we are about to debate on our 

future form of government, I would like 

to request that you come up with an issue 

that contains a comparative analysis of 

the presidential, parliamentary and federal 

forms of government. We’d like to know 

the difference in their structures, manner of 

governance, funding allocations, advantages 

and disadvantages, pitfalls of each in the 

Philippine setting, etc. For instance, the 

Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) is an automatic 

appropriation for LGUs in the current 

system, so what happens if there would be 

a shift to, say, parliamentary or federalism? 

It would be very informative if we can have 

a matrix of what the differences are. 

Of course, I understand that, regardless 

of form of government, the success 

of whatever system we adopt can only 

depend on the quality and the character 

of our leaders. Kindly enlighten us on 

this issue. I’m an incurable optimist, 

but it would also be nice to know how 

we are going to get screwed parliamentarilly 

or federally, knowing that we are 

already getting it presidentially. 

JOSE MA. D. VILLANUEVA 

Executive Director 

The NOVA Foundation for Differently 

Abled Persons, Inc. 

Unit 28, 2nd/F, Columbia Tower 

Ortigas Avenue, Mandaluyong City 


PCIJ 

i REPORT 

THE MOCKERY 

OF MIMICRY 

This is a country where there’s always someone as a bug, and to approximate the president’s size, 

spoofing a president—dead or alive—on TV, during 

concerts, Halloween parties, and from time to hilarious but the presidential task force on politi- 

stayed close to the ground with legs bent. He was 

time, at people power marches on Edsa. 

cally correct humor didn’t think so and it’s been a 

There are a few who stand out, who have year since Bitoy morphed into Gloria. 

endured a revolution or two, and became icons. Rene Boy Facunla (who occupies the left side 

Willie Nepomuceno, Tessie Tomas, and Jon Santos of the presidential bed) is the real person inside 

have been around longer than some of the presidents 

and presidential wannabes (Cory, FVR, Erap, feather boa.) He is the latest addition to this band 

Ate Glow (the one wearing a satin nightdress and 

FPJ, GMA, Roco, Ping, Bro. Eddie, and Eddie Gil) of Excellencies. The remarkable thing about Ate 

they’ve emulated. 

Glow is he looks and sounds like GMA, even when 

Michael V’s GMA in the top-rated TV show he’s not performing. 

“Bubble Gang” was more cartoon than impersonation. 

He wore a bad wig, buck teeth, a mole as big But then, so is almost everyone 

“But I’m taller,” he says. 

else. 

PHOTO BY LILEN UY; MAKEUP CATHY CANTADA; HAIR JERRY JAVIER; 

STYLIST GUADA REYES; SPECIAL THANKS TO MANDY NAVASERO

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